Asian Long horned Beetle’s in Massachusetts

Trae Pina
Asian Long horned Beetle’s in Massachusetts




This article is about the recent discovery of the Asian long horned beetle in the Boston area, and how Brighton Marine Health Center choosing to protect the trees using a new method. This revolutionary idea is a system that injects IMA-jet, an insecticide, into the trunks of trees to fight against other pests and the beetle. President of the Boston Tree Preservation says it’s much like going to a doctor and being treated with an IV. He also said that they have a kind of vascular system and that the method has been used in other parts of the country due to the Asian long horned beetle. Trunk injection is currently favored by New Jersey, New York, and Worcester where the beetle has caused the destruction of 27,000 trees. Six beetle infected trees were found on the grounds of Faulkner hospital in Jamaica Plain and destroyed. Once a tree is infected it must be cut up into wood chips. Two ways to see if a tree is infected is to look for perfectly half-inch round holes and frass, which is made of tree shavings and insect waste. These beetles tend to prefer maple trees, but also attack other trees such as elm, chestnut and willows.

The IMA-jet injection not only protects the trees, but helps the environment. The soil is no longer drenched and trees aren’t covered from top to bottom by any spray. It was first used fifteen years ago against the hemlock wood adelgid, and was deemed successful. The injection is only shot into one place in the tree, and the whole created quickly seals itself to prevent from the injection leaking back out. One injection is all that is need for eighteen months of protection. The injection also only takes days to spread throughout the whole tree depending on the size. Saving these trees is essential to the environment, and human intervention is needed since the beetle has no natural predator here. If the beetle continues at this rate, whole forest will soon be disappearing, causing panic in whole environments.

I believe that this article was published to raise public awareness about the beetle epidemic, and to grow support and many for the new procedure in protecting the trees from the beetles. I believe that we should care because this is happening where we live. An entire forest could be destroyed by the beetles, and the count for destroyed trees continues to rise.