Volume 6 • Number 4 • Winter 2008-2009

Worcester: A City Treescape Under Siege

The invasion stated in Donna Massie's Greendale neighborhood.

Think of Worcester, just possibly, as a dress rehearsal.

Outside Worcester County, there may be few reminders of the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) other than an occasional news story.

But as the ALB-regulated area expands beyond the borders of the city of Worcester – along the Route 12 corridor into West Boylston, I-190 toward Holden, and I-290 into Shrewsbury – it is clear that the impact could stretch far beyond central Massachusetts, and that a major unchecked ALB infestation could devastate the New England countryside.

In some respects, Worcester is very much like the three other locations where the Asian longhorned beetle has cropped up since it was first sighted in 1996. Like Jersey City, New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York, and the outskirts of Chicago, it is an older city with an industrial past, perched on major transportation routes. And like those areas, there is elegance to its still-tree lined streets that, in places, continues to shine through, decades after industry began to retreat.

Like other cities, Worcester has worked with the U.S. Forest Service, the state, and UMass Amherst to inventory its trees and to document their health, value and potential threats. They do this with a Street Tree Analysis Resource Tool for Urban Forest Managers (STRATUM), developed by the UMass Amherst Department of Natural Resource Conservation and the USDA Forest Service. According to the STRATUM report, Worcester’s 81 percent maple urban forest provides well over $2 million in benefits at a cost of less than $1.5 million. That means a net benefit of about $57.25 per year, per tree.

Tangible benefits, like energy savings and less stormwater runoff, are quantifiable, notes the report, while others may be impossible to measure: the sense of place trees create, improved well-being through reduced stress, the value of noise buffering, or the privacy that trees provide.

According to UMass Amherst urban forestry professor Dennis Ryan, an author of that report along with graduate student Mollie Frielicher, part of Worcester’s problem is that – again like other old cities – its urban forest depends too heavily on one species.

“Ideally, one species should represent no more than 10 percent of urban forest,” he said.

The intangible benefits of trees seem very tangible in neighborhoods like Greendale, where ALB was identified in August. It is settled squarely in the northeast part of the city, not far north of the junction of I-190 and I-290, along a major rail line, and its trees represent a buffer from the highways, and from the commercial and industrial areas directly to the east. Trees are tied to property values and peace of mind.

It was through a nearby industrial site that ALB is thought to have entered the area, hitching a ride in wooden pallets.

As Debby Childs shows, climbing to retrieve specimens is the best way to identify trouble.

“We’re pretty sure that the first infested tree has been identified,” said UMass Extension entomologist Bob Childs, adding that it can take several years for a healthy tree to sicken and, inevitably, die. That’s why, he noted, it’s not all that surprising that the beetle may have been around for some time.

“Every time I go into the neighborhood, people want to show me their trees. They tell me they’ve been seeing these things for years,” he said. It is clear the trees are essential to the neighborhood, he said.

That’s why both Childs and Pat Bigelow of Bigelow Nurseries agree on the importance of a bold, and possibly risky, new approach to eradicating ALB in Worcester. Until now, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) strategy has been to cut down not just infested trees, but also to take down uninfested-but-susceptible trees within a quarter-mile radius.

The new strategy calls for the vulnerable-but-ALB-free trees to be injected with a systemic pesticide called imidacloprid. Some maples may be saved.

“This is the most residential area to have been infested. To have to cut down all those trees would have been impractical at best,” said Bigelow.

Removal of infested trees began in mid-December. The cost of the eradication program will be steep, but with the help of Congressman James McGovern, who represents Worcester, the federal government has agreed to foot most of the bill.

After new trees have been planted, an area in which UMass Amherst can be especially helpful, says UMass Amherst’s Dennis Ryan, Worcester may wind up with a healthier, more diverse, and less vulnerable urban treescape.

The link between Worcester County and UMass Amherst runs deep and has been important. City Manager Michael V. O’Brien, who has been highly effective in marshalling government, industry and media support, is an alum, and Brian Breveleri, the city’s arborist and tree warden, attended UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School. Professors Dennis Ryan and David Kittredge will both have students working in the city in coming months.

In addition, Colin Novick – who heads the Greater Worcester Land Trust, which has been instrumental in identifying infested trees – is a graduate of UMass Amherst’s Keystone program, through which Kittredge and Extension’s Paul Catanzaro train local leaders in key elements of forest ecology, sustainable forest management, wildlife habitat, and land protection.

Credits:
Photography: Robert Childs
Writing: Wesley Blixt

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