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 One of the greatest threats to the beauty and ecological integrity of our state parks is the invasion of exotic organisms (usually from other continents) into our native plant and animal communities. Many of us remember the periodic outbreaks of gypsy moths that defoliate our forests and stress the trees. Lots of us are also familiar with invasive plants such as garlic mustard that crowd out trillium and other native wildflowers in our forests. Less well-known are other exotic species, particularly ones new to the area, that threaten our woods and waters.

 

 On Earth Day, Friends of Treman volunteers joined park staff and other volunteers grubbing out invasive shrubs at the start of the Rim Trail at Buttermilk Falls State Park. Invasive woody and non-woody plants threaten the natural forest community in this and other parks of our area. On Earth Day, we ripped out lots of privet, barberry, honeysuckle, and bittersweet from the woods along the trail in lower Buttermilk. It’s a start, but the amount of these and other weeds that remain all over the park is daunting.

Park staff and volunteers remove alien shrubs from start of Rim Trail at Buttermilk Falls on Earth Day, 2010.

  

Friends of Treman volunteers destroy oriental bittersweet that has overwhelmed native vegetation along the Buttermilk Falls Rim Trail.

One of the most disturbing new foreign invaders that threatens to radically change our gorge forests is an insect called the “hemlock woolly adelgid.” Cornell Plantations staff began a campaign last year to recruit volunteers to survey infestations in the area, particularly in gorges. The woolly adelgid attacks the needles of eastern hemlock trees, the evergreen common in our gorges that is such a part of their beauty.

The white blobs on the underside of this eastern hemlock tree twig are the hemlock woolly adelgid feeding on the needles. Photo by Mark Whitmore.

 

 

 

 

Eastern hemlock trees are an important part of the gorge ecological community as well as being integral to the aesthetic beauty of places like Lucifer Falls at Robert H. Treman State Park.

While scientists work hard to research and test potential biological controls of this pest that has killed hemlock forests in much of the eastern U.S., Cornell Plantations and other staff are trying to get an accurate picture of the infestation that has reached our area. Right now, the hemlock woolly adelgid is found at Robert H. Treman and Watkins Glen State Parks, and near Taughannock Falls State Park, as well in Cornell natural areas including Cascadilla Glen and Beebe Lake in Ithaca.

Sarah, a NY State Parks Natural Heritage Program employee, tags an infested hemlock tree on the Rim Trail at Robert H. Treman State Park.

This year, NYS Parks Natural Heritage Program staff has begun surveying and marking infested trees at Robert H. Treman and Watkins Glen State Parks. The intention is to return later in the year and apply treatments to individual trees to try to slow down the spread of the infestation. Hopefully, enough trees will be protected until more practical, economical, and widespread measures can be developed and deployed. What is at risk is the beauty and ecology of our gorge forests. Find out more about this threat to our forests at Cornell’s New York Invasive Species Research Institute webpage.

Notice the seriously thinned foliage in the canopy of this large eastern hemlock tree that has been tagged for treatment at Robert H. Treman State Park.

One of many dead eastern hemlock trees standing in Dark Hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Because of the loss of old growth hemlocks in the national park, Dark Hollow and Dark Hollow Falls are no longer dark. Will this be the future of our beautiful gorges in the Finger Lakes?

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