Kentucky Heartwood
  • Home
  • News and Events
    • Forest Blog
    • Newsletters
    • Calendar
    • Music Festival >
      • Music Festival Sponsor Page
      • Music Festival Pics
    • Virtual Membership Meeting 2021
    • The Three R's with Davis Mounger
    • White fringeless orchid mural
  • Projects
    • Forest Watch >
      • Jellico
      • Red River Gorge >
        • Report Damages RRG
      • Pine Creek Forest Restoration Project
      • South Redbird Project
      • Blackwater IRMS
      • Forest Plan Amendment
      • Greenwood
      • Land Between the Lakes >
        • Birmingham Ferry Salvage Project
        • LBL Scenery Management Plan
        • LBL Video Project
        • Pisgah Bay Project >
          • Pisgah Bay Comment Letter
      • Beaver Creek Commercial Harvest
      • Climax & Little Egypt >
        • Crooked Creek Photos 2011
        • Crooked Creek Photos 2010
      • Upper Rock Creek Logging >
        • Rock Creek Hike, November 2009
      • Robinson Forest >
        • Robinson Forest aerial images
        • Robinson Forest Images - Coles Fork
        • Robinson Strip Mines
    • Rise and Root Rewilding
    • Hope for Hemlocks of KY
    • Wood Lily Partnership
    • Old Growth Recovery
  • Join
  • Contact
  • Email Alerts
  • Links
  • About
    • Council & Staff
    • Employment
  • New Page

Kentucky Heartwood

We need forests we can get lost in; trees that make us gape; streams we can drink from. 
​Wild places sustain and define us; ​we, in turn, must protect them.

There's good news on the hemlock situation, but the hemlock situation is not good.

11/20/2018

0 Comments

 

This is a cross-post from www.hopeforhemlocksky.org by Kentucky Heartwood's hemlock program coordinator, Austin Williams. You can visit that site to learn more about the decline of Eastern hemlock in Kentucky and how you can help, including information on treating hemlocks on your land.​​

Tsuga canadensis
Canopy of old growth hemlocks in the Rock Creek Research Natural Area in Laurel County. These trees have been treated.
The functional extinction crisis of the Eastern hemlock, Tsuga canadensis, is ongoing.

We’re doing all the right things, more or less. At our most recent (indoor) meeting with the Forest Service and Kentucky Division of Forestry we found out that Kentucky’s imidacloprid (the insecticide effective against hemlock woolly adelgid) treatment program is one of the most, if not the most, robust in the nation. More trees treated, more trees saved, than similar programs in New York or Vermont. That’s good, even if it gives me the feeling that we’ve sailed gracefully over a rather modest hurdle. Regardless,  treatment has begun for the Winter 2018/Spring 2019 season, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure more trees are treated on the Daniel Boone. However, now that it's been seven years since the treatment program began, resources also have to go toward re-treatment of previously treated trees. The current level of available resources, mostly money, means that it will be increasingly difficult to designate new hemlock treatment areas on public land. 
​We’re now sharing data with the Division of Forestry treatment team, helping them identify previously treated stands, that should be prioritized for re-treatment. We’re also planning volunteer service days to begin in early 2019 (watch for specific dates soon!). Volunteers will help measure and mark trees for treatment and help carry equipment, letting crews from the Kentucky Division of Forestry handle the chemical. This gets the application done faster and increases the number of trees we can treat. At least one of these events will take place in an old-growth hemlock stand that would not be treated otherwise. All good.
Picture
Picture
We're using this shared mobile GIS system to check on previously treated Hemlock Conservation Areas and recommend new ones.
​And we've got beetles!
Predator beetle release on October 25 in Laurel County. We helped release more than 500 L. nigrinus, which prey on HWA in the Pacific Northwest.
​So far this fall we’ve helped to plan and implement two releases of the HWA predator beetle, Laricobius nigrinus, on the Daniel Boone in Laurel County. Over 1,000 beetles were released in total in October and November. The Larrys* (that is, Laricobius beetles) were raised at the Lindsay Young Beneficial Insects Laboratory at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  

*Entomology
 note: No one involved in the research or rearing or release of Laricobius beetles says Laricobius. They say Larry. It’s a remarkably consistent shibboleth. Sometimes I say Laricobius and I feel a weird embarrassment. Like I’m the nerd. Entomologists are, it turns out, cool cats.

When the lab was having a hard time finding live adelgid to feed the beetles last winter and spring, Kentucky Heartwood trucked down infested branches from the Boone to supplement the food source. And so now some of those beetles are coming back north to get some of Momma’s cooking; we're releasing them in one of the same sites where we collected live adelgid for the lab. We sincerely thank Dr. James Parkman for providing the beetles for release on the Boone. He has no contractual obligation to do so, though we’re trying to formalize the relationship with the lab to guarantee beetles for release in years to come. For this season, Dr. Parkman has indicated that we are likely to get 1-2 more releases of roughly the same size as the first two. 
Laricobius nigrinus
Larry.
​Lots of good news.

So why do I feel so uneasy? Why do I keep finding myself grinding my teeth every time I walk up a holler and into an old hemlock grove?
​
Because the functional extinction crisis of Eastern hemlock is ongoing. Because branches and whole tops of trees and whole trees are starting to come down all over the forest. 

The work we're doing is important, and it's crucial for future and long-term efforts to save, and restore, Eastern hemlock in our forests. The areas of forest we save may provide the needed genetic diversity for the success of future breeding and reintroduction programs. But at best we’re only saving a handful of trees in a handful of places, and it’s heartbreaking.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    May 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    February 2012
    October 2011
    August 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    February 2010
    November 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009

    Categories

    All
    Adventure Tourism
    Bats
    Big South Fork
    Coal
    Comment Letters
    Dance
    Daniel Boone Nf
    Dbnf
    Division Of Forestry
    Event
    Film
    Forest Council
    Forest Plan
    Forest Resource Assessment
    Fundraiser
    Great Places
    Greenwood
    Health
    Heartwood
    Hemlock Woolly Adelgid
    Horses
    Invasive Plants
    Landfill
    Litigation
    Logging
    Mountaintop Removal
    Natural Bridge
    Pipeline
    Redbird
    Robinson Forest
    Rock Creek
    State Nature Preserves
    Thanks
    Website
    White Nose Syndrome
    Ymca

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • News and Events
    • Forest Blog
    • Newsletters
    • Calendar
    • Music Festival >
      • Music Festival Sponsor Page
      • Music Festival Pics
    • Virtual Membership Meeting 2021
    • The Three R's with Davis Mounger
    • White fringeless orchid mural
  • Projects
    • Forest Watch >
      • Jellico
      • Red River Gorge >
        • Report Damages RRG
      • Pine Creek Forest Restoration Project
      • South Redbird Project
      • Blackwater IRMS
      • Forest Plan Amendment
      • Greenwood
      • Land Between the Lakes >
        • Birmingham Ferry Salvage Project
        • LBL Scenery Management Plan
        • LBL Video Project
        • Pisgah Bay Project >
          • Pisgah Bay Comment Letter
      • Beaver Creek Commercial Harvest
      • Climax & Little Egypt >
        • Crooked Creek Photos 2011
        • Crooked Creek Photos 2010
      • Upper Rock Creek Logging >
        • Rock Creek Hike, November 2009
      • Robinson Forest >
        • Robinson Forest aerial images
        • Robinson Forest Images - Coles Fork
        • Robinson Strip Mines
    • Rise and Root Rewilding
    • Hope for Hemlocks of KY
    • Wood Lily Partnership
    • Old Growth Recovery
  • Join
  • Contact
  • Email Alerts
  • Links
  • About
    • Council & Staff
    • Employment
  • New Page