America's Temperate Hardwood Forests are slowly dying -- will anyone care?

[Leopolds Ghost]

"It's nature's way of telling you... something's wrong..."

I have to find the book for a proper citation, but the author of a book on the decline of respect for scientific analysis wrote an entire chapter on the subject of how most of the native hardwood species in the US are going extinct. Soon there will BE no more native hardwood forests.

The author focused on the Hickory debacle, a subject you probably didn't hear about on your favorite high-tech urban blog or teevee talk show.

The biggest blow was the very recent extinction of the American Hickory in the wild, which happened due to a blight in the late 90s and early 00s.

The Hickory, Elm and Chestnut once dominated the true old growth forests of the US. They generated common expressions, like the nickname for President Jackson -- "Old Hickory". Without them, there essentially are none (old growth forests that is). Humankind has wiped out the entire biome that existed prior to European colonization.

The last bastion of the American Hickory, America's largest hardwood tree (almost as big as the redwoods) was the old growth forests of the Great Smoky Mountains.

There, scientists scrambled to come up with a successful cure for the insect-borne blight before all of America's oldest and hugest trees east of the Rocky Mountains -- Hickorys -- did you know that? -- died suddenly.

They rushed, and surprisingly, found a cure that had to be administered through injection into the old, surviving trees. These are (were) trees almost as big as the redwoods.

Sadly, the cure cost money, and the Forest Service under Clinton and Bush II zeroed out funding for the program to save the trees. (it was actually under Clinton, but Bush's election was merely the nail in the coffin since the foresters who came up with the cure -- think of the movie Outbreak -- were counting on Gore to reverse Clinton's policy on the matter and save the Hickory). The Forest Service maintained that their objective is to manage forests for sustainable harvesting, not protect old trees. The American Hickory is now probably extinct in the wild.

Because they are slower growing than redwoods, but almost as big -- and thrive in isolated groves in the deep forest -- it will be 2000 years for the species to recover -- if it does at all.

The American Chestnut is infamously all but extinct, and I have heard of no effort by environmentalists or the government to bring it back. It's not cute and cuddly, like the panda.

The American Elm is an icon of older cities like DC, where all of the streets and the National Mall are planted with elms. Dutch Elm disease has wiped it out almost everywhere else and only a concerted triage effort saved the elms in DC. They are now gradually dying of old age and not being replaced with elms -- why plant a high risk, high maintenance forest tree in an urban area, from a dying species, when you can plant ornamental bushes? It's not like it's a symbol of the US, like the bald eagle.

The American Black Walnut has been logged to near extinction for its exceptionally hard wood. It is too slow growing to recover, since Americans have no patience to plant slow-growing forest trees.

Worst of all, the Sudden Oak Death Syndrome (SOD?) recently afflicted Northern California, which has relatively few hardwood forests. It has a death toll of 99%.

If it escapes from California, you can say goodbye to the oak trees of the East Coast which now account for something like 40% of the trees I think.

Folks on the West Coast and urban East Coast are probably unaware about the death of biodiversity in East Coast forests, which were once the largest hardwood forest in the world -- the Amazon of temperate hardwood forests is now all but gone thanks to suburban development and hardwood die-offs due to invasive blight (the Hickory blight and Elm disease are from overseas, as is SODS IIRC) and global warming, which even opponents of passively dismiss as likely to eliminate the East Coast hardwood biome. Climates evolve, it won't be there in 50 years so why fight to save it? Let's plant scrub pines! They're faster growing anyway (Americans are impatient) and you can harvest them for timber.

Massive tree die-offs are happening in the Great Lakes region recently, according to relatives.

This dilemma is magnified by the gentrification of inner city areas and the accompanying demolition of urban forests as new residents move in and demand more stringent power line maintenance, re-landscape yards and cut down trees impinging on sidewalks and interfering with plans for repaved driveways and enlarged roadways to service all those eager, progressive urbanites and suburbanites who want to save the environment by moving closer in instead of greenfields developments. Unfortunately they are bringing their ideas with them. Quite a few humans are genetically predisposed to hate and fear heavily wooded areas. We are after all creatures of the savanna. So the attitude toward tree cover in urban and suburban areas is decidedly ambivalent.

Within 50 years every neighborhood in America will look like the Ballard district of Seattle and the post-fire Oakland Hills of the Bay Area, famous examples of deforestation due to the priorities of the residents who developed those areas. Like all neighborhoods looked 150 years ago -- it is only a fluke of the streetcar era -- a period of national beautification -- that America even has street trees. And the idea never caught on in suburbs built after the 1960s, as can be witnessed by the total deforestation of every new subdivision. Outside of suburbs (which now consume much of the East Coast prime agricultural and bottomland forest) in "old growth" areas the situation is even worse. Old Growth hardwoods are dying off of disease at an alarming rate.

[NutmegYankee]

1. RE: the Chestnut - http://www.acf.org/

The goal of THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT FOUNDATION is to restore the American chestnut tree to its native range within the woodlands of the eastern United States, using a scientific research and breeding program developed by its founders. The American Chestnut Foundation is restoring a species - and in the process, creating a template for restoration of other tree and plant species.

In 2005, we harvested our first potentially blight-resistant chestnuts. We are now in a phase of rigorous testing and trial, in both forest and orchard settings. It is our confident expectation that we will one day restore the chestnut to our eastern forests. The return of the American chestnut to its former niche in the Appalachian hardwood forest ecosystem is a major restoration project that requires a multi-faceted effort involving 6,000 members & volunteers, research, sustained funding and most important, a sense of the past and a hope for the future.

This is one of the many groups I support.

[handmade34]

3. learned a little about that

in reading "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver cool stuff

[NutmegYankee]

4. One of the test sites is next to Sleeping Giant State Park in CT.

It was wonderful to walk under the branches of the chestnuts.

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Good for them -- and you -- for telling us about this.

I remember reading an update about the Chestnut situation ten years back, when the only native (non-hybridized) Chestnut trees left were like a dozen or so trees -- literally! -- scattered around the East Coast, and scientists were busily taking cuttings from them, trying to save the species from total extinction.

Whenever I tried to ask for more information everyone I spoke to seemed to think it was hopeless to save the species, but the surviving Chestnuts seemed to be immune to the chestnut blight, so I always thought there was hope.

The situation with the Hickory is much grimmer and more depressing, in part because these trees were the largest hardwoods in America -- almost as big as the redwoods -- and disappeared without most people even knowing they exist. In part I think this is because they only grow well in the deep forest -- away from humans -- and grow very, very slowly, so the redwood-sized Hickorys were very old (over a thousand years IIRC -- I have to look up the book that is the source for this info on the Hickory debacle of the late 90s / early 00s.) Like the Black Walnut, they are slow growing enough that even if a concerted effort is made to save the species, we will never see the likes of those behemoths again. The blight happened suddenly too -- foresters didn't expect it to reach the mountain fastnesses of the Great Smoky Mountains where all the surviving old growth Hickorys were.

One of the dozen or so surviving Chestnut trees was (hopefully still is!) in someone's front yard.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

15. I was about to mention them, and saw your post

here is the site I found:
http://www.ask.com/wiki/The_American_Chestnut_Foundation

I have planted many American Chestnuts, a lot of Hybrids and have over 125 year old European Chestnuts on this property. There were 9, but the guy we bought the place from cut one down to make his dad a coffee table. That's how we know how old the trees are, they were almost a hundred years old then, and we have been here over 30 years. Some of the chestnuts I have planted have gotten diseases and died.

The property North of us is filled with dead Tan Oak. There are some fir and redwoods, and even a nice Calif. Nutmeg I saw, so I think other trees will move in. The Pomo ate the Tan Oak Acorns. I have also planted lots of Redwood, various Pines (though not native they grow in the grassland this South facing slope was.) When we bought, there was one circle of redwoods, a Redwood stump and some fir snags on the top of the hill which had been cleared for grazing. A large old wolf Fir down by the apple orchard and Deciduous Oaks down along the seasonal ravines. We have changed the place a lot with reforestation projects and hedge rows.

I posted the other day about the wine companies that want to clear cut the Redwoods, in the thousands of acres, to plant Pinot.

To the OP: There are folks who care, and are trying to make this place better than they found it.

ADW

[handmade34]

2. I care

I went to visit The General, the largest known living single stem tree on Earth a few weeks back... I love trees...

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. :-)

:hi:

[MadHound]

5. The American Hickory is not extinct

Yes, it is dwindling, like other species, but it isn't extinct. I have several on my property, and they are still common in Missouri.

As much as people hate farm subsidies, they do serve a purpose. There are tree restoration programs that pay farmers to plant various trees and other native plants. I've got fifty acres planted in Black Walnut, and others have done the same here in the Midwest.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. The source I have for this was a book reporting on the situation circa 2002

That was reporting on when the Hickory blight swept through and killed all the old growth Hickorys.

It's not clear if any of them survived as of when the book went to press. The author also made clear
to distinguish that the topic was a blight that affected the Native American species of Hickorys, which
were the big, huge ones in old growth forests. I don't know if the blight has reached other areas -- the
scientists thought there was a latitude boundary for it that would keep it out of the Smokies but didn't,
because the insects could only thrive in certain areas.

The fact that the big thousand-year-old Hickorys died and nobody talks about it is what disturbs me. The scientists who tried to save them describe it as the East Coast version of the Redwoods.

Imagine what people would say if a blight wiped out the Redwoods. Well, it wiped out the old growth hickory trees in the East Coast.

The book was on the topic of scientific illiteracy and its adverse effects on the political debate.

The author was not a radical greenie or anything.

The info on Sudden Oak death comes from several magazine and newspaper articles and I've heard no information on progress since. Perhaps they've managed to confine it to Northern California (knock on wood).

[pitohui]

24. there's literally extinct and functionally extinct

i won't comment on the tree situation in missouri about which i know nothing but i will comment that there is a problem of a species still having adults but not being able to breed

there are still chestnut trees, i think there are even still elms but they cannot reproduce, the young live only a few years and then die, so the species are functionally extinct even tho they are still around

functionally extinct may not be the correct term in science, you may need to get a real biologist to explain it!

the way it was first explained to me was the forest species of birds in africa, for instance, the crowned eagle of kenya

there are still wild crowned eagles flying around the forest but in some (maybe all) areas they are functionally extinct -- they are only adults that cannot breed because there is not enough forest remaining for them to start nests and raise young -- therefore while i and others have seen the species we saw what the guide called "ghosts" -- the living dead -- they have no piece of the future because they cannot breed

this is my impression of the case of MANY trees, especially oaks, there are a great many ancient oaks still standing but when they die in a few hundred more years, there will not be any more, because there are no middle-aged oaks, we set aside parks or we have fine plantations where the ancient oaks already at a lovely old age are displayed but we as a species do not set aside areas for the young or middle-aged oaks to spend many generations growing older...

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. CORRECTION -- the extinction level event the Original Post refers to is the American HEMLOCK, sorry.

I posted without looking up the chapter in the book that discusses the current mass die-off of old-growth American Hemlocks, because I couldn't find the book.

However, the fact that nobody corrected this error in my OP suggests that most people do not even know this is happening.

Per NPS, Hemlocks (not Hickory) are the "redwood of the East". The adelgid is killing off 80-90% of them, including all the old-growth ones (the "redwood" type Hemlocks).

National Park Service says:

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

http://www.nps.gov/grsm/naturescience/hemlock-woolly-adelgid.htm

Eastern hemlock trees are some of the largest and most common trees in the Great Smoky Mountains. Unfortunately, they are under attack from a non-native insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid. Without successful intervention, the hemlock woolly adelgid is likely to kill most of the hemlock trees in the park.

Called the "redwood of the east," eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) can grow more than 150 feet tall on trunks measuring six feet in diameter. Some hemlocks in the park are over 500 years old.

Over 800 acres of old-growth hemlock trees grow in the Smokies—more than in any other national park. Younger hemlock forests cover an additional 90,000 acres of land in the park. Originally discovered here in 2002, adelgid infestations have now spread throughout the park’s hemlock forests. In some areas infested trees have already begun to die.

Since its arrival in the U.S. in the 1920s the hemlock woolly adelgid has rapidly colonized parts of New England and the Mid-Atlantic States, where it feeds on eastern hemlock. In the south, it also feeds on Carolina hemlock. The insect is easily dispersed by birds and wind but travels most rapidly as a hitchhiker on infested horticultural material.

The hemlock woolly adelgid has infested hemlocks on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 10 years and in Shenandoah National Park since the late 1980s. In these areas as many as 80 percent of the hemlocks have died due to infestation.

Hemlocks play an important role by providing deep shade along creeks, maintaining cool micro-climates critical to survival of trout and other cold water species. The impact of widespread loss of hemlock could trigger changes more significant as those that followed the demise of the American Chestnut in the 1930s and 40s.

What is the National Park Doing?

Three different types of treatments are used to kill adelgids on hemlock trees:

• Foliar Treatments

Hemlocks in developed areas and backcountry sites accessible by road are treated with insecticidal soap or horticultural oils. Sprayed from truck-mounted spray units, these sprays smother and dry-out the adelgids on contact. The equipment can spray up to 80 feet into the canopy of large roadside trees and can efficiently treat areas of smaller trees. However this method kills only the insects that are present on the tree at the time of application and requires retreatment every six months to one year.

• Systemic Treatments

Hemlocks that are growing near campsites or are too tall to be sprayed are treated with a systemic insecticide (imidacloprid) either by soil drenching or by injecting the insecticide directly into the trunk. Soil drenching involves temporarily removing the duff—a layer of organic matter—from around the base of the tree then pouring a mixture of imidacloprid and water on the bare ground around the tree within a foot of the trunk. The duff layer is then replaced. The results of insecticidal treatments have been dramatic. Trees with ashen gray foliage prior to treatment recover their color and produce new growth. Treatments may remain effective for up to three years.

• Predator Beetles

The park began releasing predatory beetles, which feed exclusively on adelgids, as a biocontrol in 2002. It will take several years before populations of beetles increase enough to control adelgid infestations. Although it is too early to assess the overall success of this biocontrol, preliminary monitoring results are encouraging.

You Can Help

Although the adelgid will forever alter hemlock forests of the Smokies, with continued funding, dedicated staff, and committed partners, future visitors to the park will still be able to marvel at the "redwood of the east."

Efforts to control hemlock woolly adelgids are being funded through the Save the Hemlocks initiative of the Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a nonprofit organization. For additional information, call [phone].

Note the lack of federal funding.

Did You Know?

About 100 native tree species make their home in Great Smoky Mountains National Park—more than in all of northern Europe. The park also contains one of the largest blocks of old-growth temperate deciduous forest in North America.

[MadHound]

35. They started this work on the Hemlocks about fifteen years ago,

I went camping in the Smokies and talked with a conservation agent who was doing a hemlock inventory. They were aware of the problem just beginning to emerge then. Apparently it has gotten much worse.

Thank you for your correction. For a moment there I thought I was a little island in the midst of a wilderness of Hickory extinction.

Another problem is that we're going to lose ash trees, and soon. The Emerald Ash Borer is another invasive species that is laying waste to virtually all ash trees. They are spreading at an alarming rate, and there is no known predator or solution here.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. I would say no one cares. At least...

no one in a position to do anything about it.

Easter Island, Scotland, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern areas, Pre-Columbian South American forests, British Columbia... Even the Amazon is in danger.

Forests all over the planet have at some point disappeared because it is more important to clear land or use the wood NOW than to keep them for future generations. We have traditionally mined forests, rather than harvesting them.

But, why should forests be any different than anything else we find useful or tasty?

[handmade34]

9. ...don't know what you've got until it's gone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwUJH70ubM

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. The entire Middle East is being desertified in part because of humans.

National boundaries alone are visible from space because of the different climates resulting from land use policies by people speaking different languages who are at war with each other because of eye-color or diet.

Trees and thriving wetlands on one side, desert on another.

Like the Marshes of Southern Iraq.

Considered by Christians and Muslims to be the original Garden of Eden. Gone because of the War in Iraq.

Jared Diamond talked about Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic. Another case where the deforestation on one side of the imaginary line is visible from space.

[XemaSab]

16. I thought Saddam drained the marshes in Iraq

:shrug:

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. Well yeah, but it wouldn't have happened if Bush Sr had backed internal solution

And supported the Shiite and Kurd uprisings in Iraq. == No 2nd Iraq War, possibly no 2nd Gulf war.

Saddam drained the marsh Arabs out after we washed our hands of them.

Who aren't actually Arabs, they're such an ancient people but they were tied to the marsh... at least the good news is some of them want to restore the marsh but I don't think you'll see Western infrastructure $ going to it.

[Odin2005]

18. Those Iraqi marshes were where civilization began 6000 years ago. Sumeria.

:(

[KT2000]

11. It is our whole planet

When we read about a particular parasite, disease or fungus that threatens groups of trees, plants or animals, we are really reading about species whose immune systems have been so weakened that they are vulnerable. Humans belong to that group as well.
There are many sources that will be the tipping point.
Our polluted planet is testing all kinds of species and since there is no effort to preserve them, we will lose many - including humans.

[pansypoo53219]

13. i have 2 elms that planted themselves in the back yard + i got

baby elms i gotta move from near the house.

[pepito]

14. : thank you for bringing awareness

i love my 8 large Maples,and the 100s of birds that occupy them..trees breathe oxygen to us,and all living things:toast:

[Odin2005]

17. Here in Fargo we are lucky that the bugs that transmit Duch Elm Disease...

...don't do well in our cold winters, and our city arborists are very good at curing infected trees and preventing the spread of the disease. There are many elms with faded black stripes that show that they have had the disease years ago, but survived. The American Elm still dominates the older neighborhoods, creating gorgeous green cathedrals over the streets.

[NickB79]

19. I'm an avid silviculturalist (tree grower), and I've not heard of any hickory die-off

A Google search reveals nothing on it either.

Can you provide a source about this? It may be that the die-off seen was localized and due to one of the prolonged droughts the Southeast has seen in recent years rather than anything widespread. I know a lot of trees of many different species have been hit hard by droughts in recent years.

Thanks!

On edit: there is no such thing as an "American hickory" as a species. There are pignut, shellbark, shagbark, and mockernut hickory (I may have forgotten some). All of these are quite common throughout the eastern US, and are definitely not extinct. Hell, there are dozens of them growing all the way up here at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. They're also widely available through almost all reputable mail-order nurseries. Plus, they are not nearly as slow-growing as implied, being able to grow 1-2 ft/yr and bear nuts in under 20 years under good conditions. I actually have a few shagbarks growing in my yard from local seed.

[LiberalEsto]

27. Plenty of hickories in my part of Maryland.nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

30. CORRECTION -- American HEMLOCK, not Hickory. My source was a book and I can't find it. NPS.gov says:

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

http://www.nps.gov/grsm/naturescience/hemlock-woolly-adelgid.htm

Eastern hemlock trees are some of the largest and most common trees in the Great Smoky Mountains. Unfortunately, they are under attack from a non-native insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid. Without successful intervention, the hemlock woolly adelgid is likely to kill most of the hemlock trees in the park.

Called the "redwood of the east," eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) can grow more than 150 feet tall on trunks measuring six feet in diameter. Some hemlocks in the park are over 500 years old.

Over 800 acres of old-growth hemlock trees grow in the Smokies—more than in any other national park. Younger hemlock forests cover an additional 90,000 acres of land in the park. Originally discovered here in 2002, adelgid infestations have now spread throughout the park’s hemlock forests. In some areas infested trees have already begun to die.

Since its arrival in the U.S. in the 1920s the hemlock woolly adelgid has rapidly colonized parts of New England and the Mid-Atlantic States, where it feeds on eastern hemlock. In the south, it also feeds on Carolina hemlock. The insect is easily dispersed by birds and wind but travels most rapidly as a hitchhiker on infested horticultural material.

The hemlock woolly adelgid has infested hemlocks on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 10 years and in Shenandoah National Park since the late 1980s. In these areas as many as 80 percent of the hemlocks have died due to infestation.

Hemlocks play an important role by providing deep shade along creeks, maintaining cool micro-climates critical to survival of trout and other cold water species. The impact of widespread loss of hemlock could trigger changes more significant as those that followed the demise of the American Chestnut in the 1930s and 40s.

What is the National Park Doing?

Three different types of treatments are used to kill adelgids on hemlock trees:

• Foliar Treatments

Hemlocks in developed areas and backcountry sites accessible by road are treated with insecticidal soap or horticultural oils. Sprayed from truck-mounted spray units, these sprays smother and dry-out the adelgids on contact. The equipment can spray up to 80 feet into the canopy of large roadside trees and can efficiently treat areas of smaller trees. However this method kills only the insects that are present on the tree at the time of application and requires retreatment every six months to one year.

• Systemic Treatments

Hemlocks that are growing near campsites or are too tall to be sprayed are treated with a systemic insecticide (imidacloprid) either by soil drenching or by injecting the insecticide directly into the trunk. Soil drenching involves temporarily removing the duff—a layer of organic matter—from around the base of the tree then pouring a mixture of imidacloprid and water on the bare ground around the tree within a foot of the trunk. The duff layer is then replaced. The results of insecticidal treatments have been dramatic. Trees with ashen gray foliage prior to treatment recover their color and produce new growth. Treatments may remain effective for up to three years.

• Predator Beetles

The park began releasing predatory beetles, which feed exclusively on adelgids, as a biocontrol in 2002. It will take several years before populations of beetles increase enough to control adelgid infestations. Although it is too early to assess the overall success of this biocontrol, preliminary monitoring results are encouraging.

You Can Help

Although the adelgid will forever alter hemlock forests of the Smokies, with continued funding, dedicated staff, and committed partners, future visitors to the park will still be able to marvel at the "redwood of the east."

Efforts to control hemlock woolly adelgids are being funded through the Save the Hemlocks initiative of the Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a nonprofit organization. For additional information, call [phone].

Note the lack of federal funding.

Did You Know?

About 100 native tree species make their home in Great Smoky Mountains National Park—more than in all of northern Europe. The park also contains one of the largest blocks of old-growth temperate deciduous forest in North America.

[JoeHill101]

20. stop the growth of american population

but no one wants to talk about that

[Lorien]

25. Yes, the planet will look like Easter Island sooner than later

if we don't choose to limit family size (ZPG).

[amborin]

21. great post!

[pitohui]

22. i think a lot of people care but as far as i know there is nothing known to be done

the hardwoods are going to be extinct in a few centuries, it is hard to figure out what is to be done, i don't think they even have a good handle on the cause of these extinctions, i mean yes it's a disease but they don't seem to be able to cure these diseases -- this has been discussed for my entire lifetime and it is only getting worse

the pines (softwoods) will go next, with the pine beetles and the like

we need to get some good technology/cures FAST or there will be no more "real" trees -- i think eucalyptus will survive

the cure for american chestnut doesn't work as far as i know, the trees grow only a few years and they die, are we sure the cure for the hickory would have worked -- yes, it should have been tried but are we sure it would have mattered?

i know someone who tried to grow the franklin tree, it lived only five years

we can take grafts and provide a place for these trees but we also need to actually eradicate these new disease quickly

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. The last passenger pigeon lived in a zoo... efforts to hybridize it failed n/t

[merkins]

23. K&R

It's an unmitigated nightmare alright. Looks like the interior USA is going to be annexed by the Chihuahuan Desert anyways.

[LiberalEsto]

26. I have two chestnut hybrids

They are a cross between the American chestnut and the Chinese chestnut, and are supposed to be immune to the blight. One of them flowered this summer.

Don't forget the ash trees are being wiped out by the emerald ash borer.

[madokie]

29. We still have a lot of Hickory around here

east of the neosho river that is. I wasn't aware that there was something going on with them. Goes to show how well I pay attention.
In my lifetime I've planted hundreds of trees just because I like trees, I like shade to get in out of the summer heat from. Anyways I hope that they find what is killing the hickory trees as they are one of my fav's

[Leopolds Ghost]

32. Sorry, I actually meant Hemlock, not Hickory in my OP. I am dyslexic

And I tried to look up the original book, which had much more information on the subject than I've seen on any blog, but I can't seem to find it. However, here's a National Park Service article on the hickory hemlock die-off and what's causing it and what can be done:

http://www.nps.gov/grsm/naturescience/hemlock-woolly-adelgid.htm

Note that efforts to save the last remaining redwood-sized hemlocks (I nearly typed hickory again) are totally deprived of federal funding and are being funded through a nonprofit organization instead, Friends of Great Smoky Mountains. "For additional information, call [phone]."

[madokie]

34. No problem I understand

You're just dyslexic, whereas I'm nutts. :-) :hi:
Thanks for clearing that up for me though, Mighty nice of you.