WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say an invasive beetle targeting New England's iconic maple trees could easily spread from tree-lined city streets to neighboring forests.
Successful eradication of the Asian longhorned beetle in Chicago and ongoing eradication efforts in Boston, New York and other U.S. cities have focused exclusively on urban street trees, but an outbreak in Worcester, Mass., has allowed the pest to invade nearby closed-canopy forests, a release from the National Science Foundation said Tuesday.
The beetle was first seen in Worcester in 2008.
Containment efforts are being conducted in a 98-square-mile area around the city, as forests surrounding Worcester are part of a heavily wooded corridor stretching from New York into New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.
"The ALB apparently has been in the Worcester area for at least 10 years, and, undetected, could have easily spread to even larger tracts of continuous forest," David Orwig, a forest ecologist at the NSF's Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research center, said.
The ALB invades many different types of hardwood trees on city streets, researchers said, but in forests the beetle disproportionately attacks large maple trees -- a tourist-drawing component of New England's iconic fall landscape as well as its maple syrup industry.
More than 29,000 infested trees have been removed as a result of the Worcester outbreak.
