A North Jersey man has discovered the voracious Asian longhorned beetle in his yard, prompting agriculture officials to plan a quarantine of the area to keep the stubborn pest from decimating forests across the state and beyond.
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The beetle, a longtime scourge in its native China, is an effective killer of maples and other hardwoods that, unchecked, could do more damage than the gypsy moth, Chestnut blight, and Dutch elm disease combined, federal officials have said.
Plant experts suspect that the beetle arrived in an illegal shipment of wood or tree clippings from quarantined areas in New York City and Jersey City, where the insect was last spotted nearly two years ago.
The latest discovery, made Monday in Carteret, Middlesex County, illustrates how stubborn the problem may be. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $182 million to eradicate the pest since 1997, putting new restrictions on international trade and destroying thousands of infested trees in New York City, Long Island and Jersey City.
Fortunately, the man who found it this time has a long memory. Don Base, 42, said he recognized the beetle from seeing it on television in 2002 and called state officials immediately after putting the bug in a jar in his freezer.
"We were extremely lucky," said Carl Schulze Jr., director of the division of plant industry at the New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
The black-and-white beetle poses a threat to trees and green lumber, not treated wood used in decks and houses. It destroys maple, birch, elm, willow, sycamore and other trees.
The beetle's presence in North America is an apparent byproduct of increased global trade. It is believed to have arrived in North America as a stowaway in packing materials from Asia.
Base, a mechanic who works for a siding manufacturer, said he found the beetle while using a weed trimmer in his yard.
"I knew right away," Base said yesterday. "I said, 'Fellow, you just ruined my day.' "
The extent of the damage remains unknown after a two-day tree inspection by federal officials. So far, they have found signs of infestation in just one tree, a crimson-king maple on a city-owned strip of grass in front of a house two doors away from Base's.
That tree was marked with dark, oval wounds where a female beetle chewed through the bark to lay eggs. The beetle that Base found was a male, so at least one more could be on the loose.
Inspectors will start climbing other trees on Monday to look for more signs, including the egg wounds and the dime-shape "exit holes" caused by mature beetles leaving a tree.
The climbers will fan out in a half-mile radius from Base's discovery, said Barry Emens, head of the USDA's beetle-eradication program in New Jersey.
When the beetles were found in Jersey City in October 2002, they had infested 113 trees, and a total of 461 trees were cut down and burned as a precaution, Emens said.
Thousands of trees were removed previously in the New York City area. The beetle also has been sighted on trees in Chicago and, most recently, in Toronto last fall.
Despite eradication efforts, some beetles seem to be escaping. The Jersey City beetles, for example, were found to have similar DNA to the beetles in New York, Emens said.
And the beetle found in Carteret is thought to be related as well, given the proximity of Base's yard to a freight-rail line and the New Jersey Turnpike, said Noel Schneeberger, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service office in Newtown Square.
Experts say destroying infested trees is the most effective way to stop the beetles. Sometimes pesticides are injected into trees as a preventive measure, but they are not effective against the beetle larvae, which burrow deep into the center of trees.
When the government destroys trees, it replaces them with a variety of different species that are resistant to the beetles, such as oak and linden, Emens said. The idea is to plant a variety of species so that no single type of insect or disease can make too much headway.
"You need to get the diversity out there, because there's other things that may come along," Emens said.