I’d like to write about Worcester, Massachusetts, and the Asian Long Horned Beetle crisis that the town dealt with beginning in 2008. For fourteen years or so, ALB had been mobilizing in New York and Chi-town, and finally had made it’s way north to New England. Reading about this incident in Jill Jonnes book Urban Forests sheds light on what’s at stake when invasive pests gain momentum in the urban forest. Not only do trees fall subject, but also communities and the entire urban landscape as a whole, not to mention historical legacies that cannot be replaced.

With the infestation in Worcester came all of the public red tape such as setting up regulated zones, and establishing restrictions on moving firewood wood outside the quarantined zones.

“Two weeks later [after a press conference announcing the infestation], at a standing-room-only town meeting, citizens were informed of the severe fines that would be levied for taking so much as a stick of wood outside the now sixteen-square-mile ‘regulated zone’ and of widespread tree removals,”(310).

Clint McFarland arrived in October from the New York City ALB front, a veteran in battling Asian Long Horned Beetle even at a ripe old age of thirty four, to take the reigns in Worcester (311).

State and federal governments spent over 40 million dollars to combat ALB in just the first year in Worcester (312).

“Like Gooch, when McFarland began to look around he was stunned. ‘It was even more devastating than I had imagined. I felt almost sick to my stomach. I didn’t see anything on that level in my years in Brooklyn'” (311)

However devastating this pest was to the urban landscape, the consideration now comes to mind of the importance that production arboriculture played in mitigating the ALB infestations. Furthermore, the use of crane assisted tree removal practices was a very popular method for quick and efficient tree removal in the devastating beetle wake. The mechanization of arboriculture in the twenty first century can be observed on the front lines of invasive pest management.

“McFarland arrived at 18 Park Villa Street, a sweet mint green clapboard Cape Cod with white shutters, a white picket fence, a towering dark pine, and a front yard wishing well and deer statue. He watched as an arborist in a hard hat climbed astride a crane’s dangling heavy ball, rode the ball up into the air, and was then slowly lowered into the upper branches of the home’s sixty foot tall back yard maple. From the side driveway, where the hundred foot tall crane sat on a flatbed truck, McFarland could see the arborist swiftly attaching the crane’s rope to various tree limbs before climbing to the ground, where he grabbed a chainsaw. The arborist roared the machine into action, in moments slicing through the maple’s thick trunk at its base…The entire maple tree, severed form the ground, rose straight up into the air, twirling as it sailed about the roof of the house, a dreamy and beautiful sight…”(313).

A dreamy sight indeed for the contracting arborists and crane operators in town taking on the huge workload of removing the ALB infested trees. Multiple crews and even multiple cranes in many situations roaring away in the face of this potential ecosystem disaster. The entire cityscape was changing drastically, whole streets and blocks once covered by a canopy of green, now lay barren and dry and sad.

“What once looked like Worcester,” said one man, “now looks like Arizona, and people are angry.” (312)

“The homeowner of 18 Park Villa Street, Helen McLaughlin, a slender eighty-two-year-old widow, stepped out on her she steps. ‘I went from window to window watching,’ she said, clutching a Kleenex in her hand. ‘It was so fascinating. My son called, and I was crying. I didn’t think I’d care, but the kids used to play in a hammock that hung between that tree and another on that’s gone now. I didn’t think I’d care, but I was really crying.’ She wiped her eyes again” (314).

Losing trees is a lot like losing memories.

McFarland received a phone call in 2010 from Faulkner Hospital in Boston with concern that the beetle was there. Of course, right across the street was the Arnold Arboretum. The maple species in particular was a favorable host for the ALB. And while this species is specifically important and plentiful in the hardwood forests of the northeast, the nearby Arnold Arboretum was home to the most expansive collection of Acer in the world. Anxiety levels were rising, to say the least. In mere days the six infected trees at Faulkner Hospital were were removed and returned to dust as was the popular management plan for dealing with infected trees. But monitoring at the Arboretum was in hyper-mode.

What’s at stake when considering the expansive collection of Acer at the Arnold Arboretum is a living history of plant propagation. The first ever paperbark maple species brought to America in the beginning of the twentieth century by famous plant explorer E.H. Wilson was there. But even more captivating was a particular species of maple that caused very serious concern for both McFarland and also the Stephan W. Schneider, who was the director of Horticulture at the arboretum.

“It was our Acer mono, and it was the largest specimen in North America. That tree came to us in 1902 as a seed from the Imperial Botanic Garden in Tokyo, Japan, and it is now roughly forty feet tall with a sixty-foot spread. They wanted to survey it first, even though it was far away from ground zero, as was our whole maple collection. But they told us that Acer mono is like caviar to the Asian long-horned beetles, and in china they use it as a lure tree.” (315-16).

How ironic?

At the brink of devastation exists many emotions: of loss, of determination, of fear of the unknown. It seems as though when faced with a natural crisis like the invasion of ALB, it is the relentless dedication of many public and private figures that best combats the pest. Communities mobilizing against the enemy, people coming together for the same cause, for the preservation of the urban forest and the trees that are rooted in the fabric of our lives. When people are threatened, we see the importance of community, both local and professional, pull together under the guidance of those that carry the torch of excellence, illuminating for future generations how to handle the darkest days of IPM. History may repeat itself, but as plant managers and tree care givers, certainly like a fine wine, we continue to get better through time.