The Bug Moves to the 'Burbs
Within a month, a second infestation of the Asian longhorn beetle was found in Amityville, Long Island, where a landscaper had brought logs from diseased trees in Brooklyn to use as firewood. (This beetle can complete its development in freshly cut limbs and firewood.) New York State has since issued a quarantine to prevent any more wood from leaving Greenpoint, but over one hundred trees in Amityville have already been infested, including willows, elms, horse chestnuts, poplars, and several species of maples.
Unfortunately, the only method of dislodging the beetles and preventing further spread is to remove the tree completely--including the stump, down to a depth of forty-six centimeters (eighteen inches)--chip it, and then burn it, all under strict quarantine procedures. An estimated two thousand trees in Brooklyn have succumbed to the beetle so far, and losing mature trees seriously affects the urban environment. "A tree that's thirty, forty, fifty feet tall, with a nice broad crown to it that's sucking in lots of pollutants, providing lots and shade, making lots of oxygen--that's a loss," comments Steve Bertram, who is with an environmental group called the Open Lands Project.
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