Pennsylvania's forests provide clean water, fresh air, wood and wood products, habitat for a wide array of species and countless recreational opportunities. But they're facing a serious threat: non-native invasive forest pests.
These pests include insects such as the gypsy moth, emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid, but there are certainly many others. While emerald ash borer was confirmed just this month in Erie County, we've witnessed destruction in the past by introduced diseases such as chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease. Because none of these species or diseases originated here, the trees have no natural immunity, and few if any natural controls exist to manage them.
The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is charged with combating these pests to help maintain the health of all of Penn's Woods, not just the forests under public ownership.
This is a daunting task in a state that happens to be 60 percent forested, with much of those lands privately owned.
In 2013, DCNR will treat 43,000 acres for gypsy moth. It will treat 74 hemlock stands for woolly adelgid. It will commit $213,000 to battle emerald ash borer. In addition, it will monitor for new invaders such as thousand canker disease, Asian long-horned beetle, exotic bark beetles and the sirex wood wasp. It will spend $300,000 in those monitoring efforts alone.
It will also work tirelessly to educate the public and private land owners about the threat of these invasives as well as ways to control their spread, including an emerald ash borer management plan to help communities prepare for and deal with this highly destructive forest pest.
It can be discouraging to look at the challenges these pests represent to our forest resources, but we can all pitch in to help.
Public outreach to identify issues before they become a problem is very important. Citizens are encouraged not to move firewood to slow the spread of forest pests from one place to another.
But we can also work toward maintaining healthy and diverse forests. Forest stands with a wide mix of tree species and trees in various sizes and age classes are much more likely to withstand an attack from species-specific invasive pests that come from around the globe.
While we can't prevent everything and we can't anticipate every new pest, we can manage for healthy and diverse forests that are more resilient to future outbreaks.
ELLEN FERRETTI is acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources in Harrisburg.