Parkway Treats Hemlocks - FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway

FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Inc. P.O. Box 341 Arden, NC 28704 P.O. Box 20986 Roanoke, Va. 24018 800-228-7275 (toll-free) 540-772-2992 (fax) staff@friendsbrp.org FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway is a non-profit, volunteer organization that is dedicated to preserving, promoting and enhancing the Blue Ridge Parkway, a national treasure. FRIENDS programs focus on preservation, protection and education. FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, organized and existing under the laws of the State of North Carolina and the Commonwealth of Virginia, whose current principal business address for identification purposes is P.O. Box 20986, Roanoke, Virginia 24018.	FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Inc. A non-profit, volunteer organizationdedicated to preserving, promoting and enhancing the Blue Ridge Parkway, a national treasure.
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	Parkway Treats Hemlocks PARKWAY TREATS HEMLOCKS By Elizabeth Hunter February, 2007: The Blue Ridge Parkway began its fourth year of treatments this spring to save its eastern and Carolina hemlocks from the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), a tiny sucking insect that is decimating hemlock stands from New England to Georgia and South Carolina. "All of the park’s hemlocks are now infested," says BRP plant ecologist Chris Ulrey. The park’s highest concentration of hemlocks occurs between Grandfather Mountain and Linville Falls and in isolated patches south of Asheville. Hemlocks north of Boone are not being treated "because those trees are too far gone"—already dead or nearly so. The treatments, in which adelgid-killing chemicals are injected around the trees’ roots, are conducted from mid-April to mid-June, "because that’s when they seem to work best." Most of the $40,000-50,000 the park receives annually from the US Forest Service to fight HWA will go to treating trees at Linville Falls (MP 316.4) and an old growth forest just north of Sims Pond (MP 295.9), Ulrey says. At Linville Falls, some trees treated the first year will be retreated. The chemical seems to protect trees from HWA for 3-4 years. Treated trees are "looking good," he says, while untreated ones—and there are legions of them—are dead or dying. Priority is given to Linville Falls’ Carolina hemlocks, a rare species that occurs only in isolated places in the Virginia, Georgia and North and South Carolina mountains, and to hemlocks in developed areas—along roads, trails and in campgrounds and picnic areas. The funding the park receives allows Ulrey’s crew of 2-3 seasonal employees to treat about 1,000 hemlocks annually. An Asian native, HWA is about the size of the periods on this page. Accidentally imported to the United States, it was first discovered in the eastern US in Richmond VA in the early 1950s. Since 1988, it has killed about 90 percent of Shenandoah National Park’s hemlocks. Great Smoky Mountain National Park, where it was discovered in the spring of 2002, about the same time it was first found at Linville Falls, is beginning to lose its old-growth hemlocks, some of which are 160-170 feet tall. Elizabeth Hunter is a freelance writer who is writing a book on the battle to save the east’s hemlocks from the hemlock woolly adelgid.
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