Officials: Invasive beetle gone from Islip

The Asian long-horned beetle has been banished from Islip, the first spot in New York State to have successfully eradicated the tree-gnawing pest.

Officials Tuesday called it a decisive moment in the 15-year battle against the invasive insect, whose voracious appetite for hardwood has destroyed more than 6,000 trees on Long Island and in New York City.

"We are ahead of the game right now," said Joseph Gittleman, project director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Asian long-horned beetle eradication program in New York.

While infestation areas farther west remain under quarantine, eradication programs are winding down as surveys, tree removal and insecticides contain the threat. It's been two years since the last flying adult beetle was seen in New York.

"We're sure not seeing the level of infestation when we started, where you could see beetles walking up and down trees," Gittleman said.

Manhattan and Staten Island should be the next areas to be declared beetle-free, in 2012 and 2014, respectively, said Kevin King of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.

"Those are targets based on extensive survey routines. We go tree by tree, block by block," he said.

Visual inspections can lead to pesticide treatment. Infested trees must be removed.

"We do this for three years before we develop a level of confidence that we can release an area," Gittleman said.

In the 1990s, the pest came to the United States accidentally in packing crates sent from China. The beetles were first detected in New York in 1996.

Islip got off relatively lightly compared with harder-hit areas to the west, losing 181 trees. The 22-square-mile Amityville quarantine area, which includes parts of Babylon, Copiague, Lindenhurst and Massapequa, lost nearly 1,941 trees, officials said.

Progress is being made there, too. Said Gittleman: "We don't have a timetable, but the eradication effort is going well."

Islip is the third area nationwide to get rid of the pest, officials said at an event heralding that fact Tuesday at Brookwood Hall Park in East Islip. Ending an 11-year eradication effort, the USDA will now issue a federal order rescinding the 7-square-mile quarantine area.

Hudson County in New Jersey was declared beetle-free in 2008. The insect also has been vanquished from the state of Illinois.

"The stakes are high," King said, noting that the horticulture industry is New York's second-largest agricultural sector after dairy.

The state has 18.5 million acres of forest, with maple trees accounting for about half. New York is a major producer of maple syrup, second to Vermont.

Maple, elm, willow and horse chestnut are among the trees the beetles have attacked the most, King said.