Pennsylvania's Trees: Threats & Protection Efforts
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Learn something new!
Pennsylvania is well known for its trees. It is in our name, after all. Our state holds about 200 different species of trees and a number of them are under threat due to invasive pests or disease. Many of these iconic woody wonders are the focus of specific conservation efforts that will, hopefully, prevent us from losing their contributions of diversity to our forests.
Pennsylvania has been a changing land for the last 200 years. When Europeans first arrived they found dense forests dominated by White Pine and Hemlock anywhere there was water, and enormous stands of Chestnuts, Oaks and Maples everywhere else. Then, over the course of colonization almost all these original stands were cut down.
While we’ve been wildly successful in reforesting our state from complete devastation, threats to many of our returned trees became widespread in the 20th century. These threats came along with the shrinking of the world due to reduced travel times from far off locales, allowing for the quick and easy introduction of invasive species.
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The American Chestnut, once so plentiful throughout the state that entire regions were named after it, suffers at the hand of one of these introduced species. A fungus, colloquially referred to as chestnuts blight, was accidentally introduced into North America in the early part of the 1900’s. The fungus attacks wounds in chestnuts and draws nutrients and energy from the tree. Interestingly the fungus does not kill off the root system, meaning that plenty of “living stools” regularly send out sprouts that grow for a few years before failing.
(photo:
http://www.classichistory.net/archives/chestnut-trees
)
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While the damage done to the American Chestnut has already taken its toll on their populations, the American Ash is currently under threat by a small beetle. The emerald ash borer, appropriately named, bores into the ash’s inner bark where it disrupts the flow of nutrients throughout the tree. The beetle can destroy the entirety of the cambium, or the growing portion of the tree, leaving behind tracks and causing the bark to slough off. Affected trees are almost always killed by the beetle and since its first sightings in 2002, It is widely considered to be the most destructive invasive forest pest in North America.
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Another invasive insect is the hemlock wooly adelgid which, like the ash borer, is named after its food source, hemlocks. Our state tree is under considerable threat due to this minuscule mangler as the adelgid sucks the sap out of the leaves of the hemlock tree, causing it to defoliate, or lose its leaves. This causes extreme stress on the tree and often kills weakened or at-risk trees. The bug leaves behind small fuzzy balls on the underside of hemlock branches that contain the wooly adelgid’s eggs. The wooly adelgid has spread to cover the entire range of eastern hemlock species and can drastically affect the survivability of hemlocks which grow slowly and make up much of mature forests in Pennsylvania.
(photo: By Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Archive, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station / © Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8339006)
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Fortunately for Pennsylvania’s trees, there are active control methods for the current threats to our forests. In the cases where control methods are no longer viable, such as the American Chestnut where billions of trees are already gone, rejuvenation efforts are underway to re-introduce the species across our forests.
The American Chestnut Foundation is the primary organization driving the return of the once dominant chestnut. Through a process of hybridization, breeding blight-resistant chestnuts with the American varieties, they are slowly creating a cultivar of the original American Chestnut that is resistant to the blight that is still dormant across our forests. Locally the ACF has partnered with the Arboretum at Penn State and other local landowners to plant hundreds of hopeful seedlings. This new generation, while only about 50% viable, makes up the beginning of a comeback for the effectively extinct trees.
(photo: PA/NJ Chapter of the American Chestnut Founation,
https://patacf.org/plant-a-tree/
)
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At-home adventure: Tree Habitat Scavenger Hunt
Click the image below for directions for a
Tree Habitat Scavenger Hunt!
Learn to look for certain areas, food, and signs of animal life. After you go on the scavenger hunt you can create your own Superhero that saves native trees from invasive pests! Access even more creative, nature-inspired activities on the
Centred Outdoors website
!
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Choose your own adventure!
Many of our threatened trees continue to thrive due to ongoing conservation efforts. Visitors wanting to see these tree species can find them in many locations across our region.
Alan Seeger
offers a glimpse into the past. Many of the trees in the protected natural area are over 200 years old and represent what most of the forests in Pennsylvania would have been like before the 1800’s. Several trails lead past stand of truly ancient hemlocks that have weathered hundreds of years and thanks to active management of invasive pests still stand today.
The trails up
Mount Nittany
in Lemont, PA pass by several examples of the “living stool” chestnuts. Visitors looking to make the journey to the top can also find small copses (a small group of trees, pronounced
cops
) of ash trees while taking in some of the best views in Centre County.
The
Spring Creek Canyon
is home to diverse and variable forest system that includes multiple efforts to save some of our threatened trees. Many of the trees in the area are still first generation regrowth from the iron and timber industries, but in that time many ash and hemlocks have begun to come up through the fast growing oaks and maples.
Tips and Tricks:
For those interested in learning more about the other native species of trees there is an entire topic dedicated to them
on the Centred Outdoors website
.
It offers an excellent introduction to identifying some of the more common trees you are likely to encounter while out exploring. It also provides a primer on the anatomy of our leafy friends and outlines some of the vocabulary associated with identifying trees.
What to bring on your adventures:
- A refillable water bottle
- Sturdy and water-resistant footwear
- Long pants and socks are recommended in areas where ticks are prevalent
- Hat, sunscreen and sunglasses
- Child carrier/backpack or is recommended for very young children
- A light snack or picnic lunch
- Cell phone for taking pictures or in case you need assistance
Remember:
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All participants will be entered to win an Organic Climbing bag. Thank you for helping us make Centred Outdoors as great as it can be!
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