To the editor:

A big thank you to Benjamin Pierce McNulty for the recent guest commentary (“The Hemlock Woolly assassin,” Oct. 31, Enterprise) about hemlock woolly adelgid, or HWA. Benjamin did a great job of describing the threat this small insect poses to Adirondack forests.

The good news is there are fun and easy ways for the public to get involved. The Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, or APIPP, has several ongoing projects focused on managing and monitoring for HWA, including the volunteer Forest Pest Hunters program. Forest Pest Hunters are community volunteers who learn how to identify and report HWA and other forest pests such as beech leaf disease, or BLD.

The Forest Pest Hunters BLD survey season happens every fall and just wrapped up. This year, volunteers adopted 59 trails and entered 153 non-detections and one new detection into iMapInvasives, the statewide invasive species database. Volunteers will start surveying for HWA in January. Last year APIPP volunteers adopted 73 trails and uploaded more than 880 HWA records into iMapInvasives, including 212 newly confirmed HWA sites. As you can see from the numbers, APIPP’s volunteers are amazing, and their work is essential to helping address the impacts of invasive species.

To find out how you can get involved in APIPP’s programs, or to learn more about invasive species in the Adirondacks, visit www.adkinvasives.com.

Tammara Van Ryn

APIPP program manager, The Nature Conservancy

Saranac Lake