Flanked by grim-faced scientists and federal officials, Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday rolled out the city’s tactical plan to squash a beetle.
Asian longhorn beetles, now roaming in at least a dozen blocks of the Ravenswood neighborhood on the North Side, could devastate the landscape of the city and the hardwood forests of the continent.
Daley said the city will bear the costs for felling, chipping and burning perhaps hundreds of trees in the neighborhood. When the beetles are gone–possibly years from now–the city will replant the area.
The larvae of the beetle, believed to have ridden to Chicago in packing crates from China, eat living wood, eventually killing their hosts.
“This is a very dangerous epidemic you can have dealing with the forestry of America,” Daley said. “This is not a joke.
“Talk about a tree person. Right here. I’m a tree hugger,” he said.
“When I see them cutting down a tree, I’m upset. But like anything else, if you don’t do things like this, you’re going to basically destroy more nature, not just an eight- or 12-block area.
“You’ll destroy not just this city but this state and this nation.”
City officials don’t yet know how many trees will come down, what it will cost, or even how widespread the problem is–it will take weeks of methodical surveying to determine that.
“We really don’t know where the outside boundary is,” said Joe Schafer, who is overseeing the search for the beetle for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We have some ideas, but time will tell.”
In New York, the only other site of a known infestation, more than 1,000 trees have been cut since 1996.
So far, about 50 infested trees–mostly maples–have been located on parkways in Ravenswood, in an area from Ravenswood to Damen Avenues, between Wilson and Berteau Avenues. Parkways are being surveyed first because yards are more difficult to access, but are presumed to be equally infested.
The boundaries have already expanded a block farther north from the parameters cited by officials Wednesday.
Crews will begin cutting infested trees in the fall, once the weather cools and the adult beetles are dead, leaving larvae inside the trees. There is no known, usable pesticide to eradicate the beetles.
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“Do not expect an early eradication,” said Kenneth C. Kruse, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “This will be a multiyear project.”
Inside the beetle zone, homeowners already were beginning to lament the impending loss.
“My son was born about the time they planted this one here,” said Mike Marinelli, 66, pointing at an infested maple just outside his front door. The tree’s top branches brushed against a third-floor window. “He grew right along with it. I’m too old to watch one grow up again.”
The Norway maples that line his block were put there by Mayor Richard J. Daley almost three decades ago to replace trees that succumbed to Dutch elm disease, another imported blight.
“These new ones were supposed to be impervious to anything,” Marinelli said. “It took a bug from another country to kill them.”
Authorities theorize the beetle came to Chicago three to five years ago in crates or pallets delivered to a Montrose Avenue business that imports hardware from China. The beetles were not discovered until last week. But whatever the source, officials are working to make sure the beetle hasn’t spread.
City foresters are scouring trees near city facilities where trimmings from trees in the Ravenswood neighborhood, perhaps with beetle eggs or larvae inside them, have been taken over the past few years.
Officials also are surveying suburban areas where the person who first discovered the beetles parked his pickup truck, which was loaded with infested firewood from Ravenswood.
To determine the current borders of the infestation, scientists worked out from what they believed was its center until they found neither beetles nor their telltale holes. Now, they are going 1 1/2 miles out from that point and working back toward the center, looking for other pockets of infestation, Shafer said.
The surveyors are finding most of the beetle’s holes on 8-inch to 12-inch branches of trees, starting about 8 feet from the ground.
Meantime, the Ravenswood area has been placed under a quarantine that prohibits raw wood products–such as firewood–from leaving the area. (The bugs do not eat kiln-dried lumber or homes, as termites do.)
Daley said the city would seek federal assistance to help to pay for the eradication and replanting, though he declined to say where the city would come up with the money or how much it would cost.
Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th), whose ward includes the Ravenswood neighborhood, said he would hold a meeting next week for residents.
“People move into Ravenswood because of the tree population and the caring that goes on for the environment,” he said. “We are very, very concerned about this.”
The invasion that caused some anguish was a golden opportunity for Jim Appleby, an associate professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Appleby hopped on the 6:30 a.m. Thursday train to Chicago to get a glimpse of ground zero.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Appleby said, snapping photos of a beetle on a maple branch.
Appleby, who specializes in insects that infest trees and shrubs, last rushed to the scene of an outbreak eight years ago, when the pine shoot beetle was first found in Ohio.
“I’m going to decapitate these before I take them back to Champaign,” Appleby said of two beetles he had placed in an ice-filled box to render them immobile.
Several residents and gawkers from nearby neighborhoods were chasing the beetles for souvenirs as the insects buzzed slowly above the ground.
“The little ones are male and the big ones are female,” said Dru Willey, who walked from her home near Pulaski Road. “I know because I saw them in action.”
It is indeed mating season for the Asian longhorn beetle, and they are reproducing with abandon. Mostly the bugs can be found on their beloved maples, where dime-size holes bored by emerging beetles riddle entire branches, and sap drips from the wounds.
Clark McCain, a 30-year-old financial analyst from Lincoln Park who has been thinking of buying a condominium just outside the beetle zone, said the recent infestation has made him less certain.
“The last thing you’d consider as a buyer is to check the trees for beetles,” McCain said.
Experts said homeowners should have little trouble spotting and identifying the beetle on their own property.
The beetle is about an inch long with white spots and zebra-striped antennas that are slightly longer than its body. Infested trees may have half-inch holes on the branches or trunks, darkened oval spots indicating where the females laid their eggs and piles of sawdust near the base or on branches.
The beetles can fly up to about 3,000 feet, though they usually don’t stray far from their host tree.
“They are quite obvious and quite large, and they are not going to fly away very easily,” Kruse said. He explained that the beetles typically stay on the same tree and can be found on the bark.
People who find the beetles are asked to call a special hot line at the Illinois Department of Agriculture: 1-800-641-3934.
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The beetle does not have to be alive to be identified.
“If you see one,” said Kruse, “just step on it.”