Good luck. We have been battling those pest for quite sometime out west. I guess the only good thing about them is that by the time the tree is dead it is also pretty much ready to burn by the time the needles turn to rust color the tree has been dry for a while
As of 2016 we had lost 18 million hectares of lodgepole pine in BC. Figures for 2018 suggest we will have lost 56% of our lodgepole in the province. 752 million m^3 of merchantable timber. Impossible to manage and we have been ravaged by fires annually. We don't get the sustained cold needed to knock them back like we used to. In the Okanagan we have noticed a surge in Douglas Fir beetle as well. We are starting to see real impact as young and mature Douglas are more vulnerable with the hot, dry summers. In the fall, it is not uncommon for me to peel open downed or newly dead fir and see the beetle infestation. The ability to process and recover value from massive stands of dead trees is nearly impossible. Quite the sight to see endless crimson/grey forests up in the interior. But, one mustn't lose sight of how many times this has likely occurred over the millennia. Nature.
Ugh, no good. Last week I saw an ALB awareness billboard just north of Boston. Haven't heard anything about them since the big push to contain them in Worcester several years back.
I can confirm they are here in RI. We have a few pines out front that are being killed by them as I type. Can only imagine all the pines we have will fall victim.
Pine beetles got some pines here. I still need to cut those dead pine trees down, especially before they start dropping the bigger branches. Sad to watch them slowly die, especially the bigger older ones even if they are just white pines.
We have been dealing with them off and on for years. Drought stress really wipes them out when the beetles get in them.
In my neck of the woods, maples and poplar are the healthiest, most prolific trees going. My town in particular is also loaded with ash, but the borer is finally here.. There are going to be some naked looking shorelines around our lakes pretty soon. Sad to see. To Hoggwood's point, all these tree diseases and infestations make me wonder what has gone on with trees in the thousands of years prior to our time.
