Come to the Tree Farm Field Day in Conway September 17th

The 2011 Massachusetts Tree Farm Field Day will be held on Saturday September 17th at Jack & Danielle Lochhead’s Tree Farm in Conway from 9 am to 4 pm.  The Lochheads are the Massachusetts Tree Farmers of the Year for 2011 and visitors to their property will be able to see a wide variety of interesting things at the Field Day.

There will be three tours of different sites on the property: one to a woodland that recently had an oak regeneration harvest with abundant new oak seedlings now taking root, one to a portion of the property that recently had a harvest of white pine and adelgid – damaged hemlock, and a third tour to see how the Lochheads have reclaimed a pasture and controlled invasive plants.

On the oak regeneration tour, visitors can see a surviving American Chestnut that has been breed using a crane as part of the American Chestnut Foundation’s breeding program.

Besides the tours, there will be short workshops on invasive insects and dealing with invasive plants.

The Lochheads have also installed solar panels on one barn and a highly efficient wood burning boiler in their home. A huge old sugar maple on the property may be a candidate for inclusion on the Massachusetts Big Tree list.

Cost of the Field Day is $20 for adults and $8 for children including a picnic lunch A flyer for the Field Day will be sent out to Tree Farmers in late August.
 
For additional information, contact Greg Cox at 413 339-5526 or by emailing gcox@crocker.com

Come Visit MFLA at the Big E!

A coalition of Massachusetts forest organizations, including the Massachusetts Wood Producers, MFLA and the Massachusetts Association of Professional Foresters will be again operating an informational booth in the Massachusetts Building at the Eastern States Exposition (the Big E) in West Springfield between September 16th and October 1st.

The purpose of the booth is to educate the public about good forest management and its importance to our everyday lives. The booth was operated last year and provided a way for participating landowners, foresters, loggers and other members of the forest community to talk with visitors about the importance of forests in Massachusetts and how they are managed and cared for.

Exhibits showed the way that typical woodlands are managed, how you can measure the growth of a tree by counting its rings, and the variety of products that wood from Massachusetts forests are used to produce.

If you’re at the Big E and like to know more about Massachusetts forests, how to identify the Emerald ash borer or just talk about trees, come to the Massachusetts building and stop by. We’d love to talk with you and we’ll give you a free copy of the Summer issue of MFLA’s magazine, The Woodland Steward.

Tornadoes Devastate Woodlands in Hampden & Worcester Counties

The three tornadoes that struck portions of Westfield, West Springfield, Springfield, Wilbraham, Palmer, Monson, Brimfield & Sturbridge on June 1st ripped apart thousands of acres of woodlands including parts of two state forests.

The tornadoes, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds, as well as destroying more than 1,000 buildings, caused extensive damage to about 10,000 acres of woodlands in a swath as much as ½ mile wide and stretching 39 miles from Westfield to Southbridge. At Brimfield State Forest, the tornado knocked down or damaged trees on more than 1,200 acres of the 3,500 acre forest.  The tornado also leveled three of the seven buildings at the State Forest headquarters, including structures built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The tornado also damaged woodlands at Robinson State Park in Agawam.  Both Robinson State Park and Brimfield State Forest have been closed to the public due to the hazards posed by the damaged trees and the need to restore access.

Cleanup of downed and devastated trees in the urban areas struck by the tornadoes has already generated many thousands of tons of tree debris that will ultimately have to be chipped for disposal.  The ongoing lack of adequate markets in Massachusetts for low grade wood materials and the state’s failure to develop uses for biomass and wood wastes means that much of the chipped materials will have to be shipped out of state, raising questions of whether solving Massachusetts’ waste problem will result in poorer markets elsewhere, hurting out of state landowners and loggers who depend upon their own markets to use low grade wood generated there.

For other information, see the Tornado Cleanup portion of this website.

Help Survey for Invasive Tree-Killing Pests!

Massachusetts’ trees and woodlands are under threat of destruction by two invasive, highly destructive, imported pests: the Asian long-horned beetle which has infested a 90 square mile area in Worcester County leading to the destruction of 30,000 trees to date, and the Emerald ash borer which has killed more than 50 million trees in Michigan. Emerald ash borers have recently been found just 25 miles from Massachusetts in Saugerties, NY.

These tree-killing invasive insects could dramatically change the composition, ecology and viability of Massachusetts woodlands.

MFLA is working with USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR) to ask our members to watch for and report any sightings of these pests.  Woodland owners are a great resource to do tree surveys as they already know which tree species are which and what looks unusual when they are examining their trees.

Please help us look for Asian Long-horned Beetle (ALB) and Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) by surveying the trees in your backyard, your neighborhood, your schools, your woodlands, and your local parks. 

Then, please report whatever you’ve found or not found – even if you didn’t find any evidence of either pest --- reporting non-occurences lets APHIS and DCR get a complete picture of where more surveys are needed and where they they don’t need to worry about now.

For information about ALBs and EABs, go to www.BeetleDetectives.com.  There you can see different information about the two pests and download the ALB and EAB information sheets and survey cards. Paper copies are available by writing USDA, APHIS, PPQ, 10 Causeway Street, Room 516, and Boston, MA 02222.

Once you have the information sheets and survey cards, take the sheets and a pair of binoculars with you and survey a group of host trees, whether it’s one tree, or a group of trees. For ash trees, either pest might be present; for maples, birches, poplars or willow, the likely pest would be Asian long-horned beetles. Look carefully with the binoculars to see if you spot the small round exit holes of the ALBs or the D-shaped exit holes of EABs.
 
Enter the results on the survey sheet; take the sheets home and submit the results either online to www.BeetleDetectives.com or mail the sheet to MFLA at P.O. Box 623, Leverett, MA 01054 and we’ll enter the results online to www.BeetleDetectives.com. 

Don’t Move Firewood --- STOP the Spread of Destructive Pests!

Invasive pests like the Asian long-horned beetle or emerald ash borer are often spread when people inadvertently move them into neighboring states in firewood. For that reason, we urge people to not move firewood between states.

Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine have now banned campers from bringing wood with them. New York also bans the importation of firewood to avoid spreading insect infestations.

The National Firewood Task Force has recommended that APHIS develop regulations and standards for the national movement of firewood, and states issue intrastate regulations similar to the APHIS regulations on the movement of firewood across state lines or for distances of more than 50 miles.  Local movement of firewood in a 50 mile radius would be unregulated provided movement is not out of an area under an existing quarantine.

If you want to help protect our forests – BUY YOUR FIREWOOD LOCALLY AND DON’T MOVE IT.

For more information, see www.dontmovefirewood.org