Released September 1, 2010
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell is leading efforts to manage outbreak populations of the emerald ash borer (EAB), a beetle that has the potential to devastate ash trees in the Northeast. The new invasive species is already in Steuben and Ulster counties. The pest first showed up in western New York last August in the Cattaraugus County town of Randolph.
"I knew it would be a matter of time until we would find the EAB at other sites in New York," said John Vandenberg, research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service and adjunct professor of entomology, who discovered the EAB in New York state last summer. "What we discovered in Randolph last year were some rather heavily infested ash trees." He hopes, he added, that the new detections have been discovered early enough to prevent disastrous infestations.
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