Researchers simulated the arrival of the invasive Asian woolly adelgid bug by deliberately killing hemlock trees in 6.5 hectares of the forest. Within the next 10 years, wild hemlock trees are predicted to die off completely in the United States.
Well, that sucks. I happen to own a bunch of hemlock trees. I'm rather fond of them, and am not looking forward to having them become a fire hazard.
They could be. There are a lot of hemlock trees in the forests of southern New Hampshire. My concern is that one year, given the climactic chaos as of late, the northeast is going to have a drought. Add to the mix a whole bunch of dead, dry hemlock needles, and there could be some serious fires in a region that hasn't really had them in the past, and is therefore lacking the experience, equipment, or institutional capacity to manage them.
It's apparently the state tree of Pennsylvania. Maybe we should change that. I like deciduous trees better anyway.
Well, maybe now that the American chestnut is being bred back from near extinction, we could just replace all the hemlocks with those.