Eastern Hemlock Wooly Adelgid update

It has been a struggle to figure our how to proceed with saving the Eastern Hemlock trees on our property. I am more than grateful to the forestry staff from the Long Point Region Conservation Authority who where on the ball and proactive with coming up with actual plans that involved doing something rather than having meetings about meetings to arrange more meetings. 

 They inventoried the hemlock for most of the Peacock Point Wetland Complex (with landowner permission) and subsequently made a treatment plan using established models used in Nova Scotia and parts of the US where this Wooly Adelgid has been killing Hemlock longer than here. 

All the Hemlock received marks. Red and Blue dotted trees received treatment



 The trees chosen for treatment are the largest and healthiest Hemlock. 

 We did manage to get an invasive species grant which was put towards the costs incurred by the LPRCA related to their treatment of our trees. 

 On June 8th 40% of the Hemlock part of the Hobbitstee property received the first treatment and on July 30th the second treatment. One is a faster acting pesticide that is shorter acting and one is a slower acting pesticide that is longer acting. it will take 6-8 months for these chemicals to kill off the pest. 

Trees getting treated



 The way these pesticides where applied is very labour intensive. Each choses tree received what is called basal bark spray which is a ring sprayed at a certain heigh on the bark with no chemical making down to the forest floor. The other was injected directly into the tree with also no chemical making it to the forest floor. A lot of thought has gone into this on my part. 

I believe in letting nature sort it self out, but the reality is that this is an introduced pest. Introduced by carelessness on the part of humans. It came from Asia to the US and was imported into Canada accidentally with trees that came into the country. 

 The Eastern Hemlock are an original growth tree for this are and major part of the habitat related to the Peacock Point wetland complex. I can’t bare the thought of watching all of them die. They are so magnificent. 

 Here is for hoping this treatment came in time and is effective in saving these trees.

Seedling Hemlock tree (hope for the future)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Story of Peacock Point

Image
Approximately 1km south of the Hobbitstee Nature Refuge is a lovely natural promontory jutting into Lake Erie, known as Peacock Point. Situated in Walpole Township (Haldimand County, ON), Peacock Point consists of a small community, classified by Haldimand County as a “Resort Residential Node”. The Peacock Point Cottage Owners Association, created in 1983, works collaboratively to maintain Peacock Park and its joyful summer social events, the shoreline water break, and a seasonally-operated water service, store, and community hall. In the 1600’s, the area around the point, richly forested with cedar and pine trees (as described in later land petitions), was inhabited by the Chonnonton First Nation (also known as the Neutral Confederacy) (Noble, 2016) (Ellis, 1961). The name Chonnonton is translated as “the people who tend or manage deer” (Noble, 2016). In the early 1650’s, the Chonnonton were driven out of the region by the Iroquois Confederacy, famine, and disease, which result...
Read more

The Accidental Meadow

Image
In December of 2021 Hobbitstee was able to purchase this amazing property. 47 Acres with 30 acres of woods and wetland and 17 acres workable farmland. In July of 2021 the farmer who rented the 17 workable acres took a wheat crop of the land and nothing was planted due to the pending change of ownership. We didn't do much with the land during the winter other than planning for the upcoming year. Busy with getting a temporary wildlife hospital (in the form of a 40' seacan) set up and made functional occupied a lot of my time as well as the planning and permit application process for the brand new state of the art wildlife hospital to be build as soon as the afore mentioned permits get issued. As soon as the weather got a bit nicer I lay awake at night planning the necessary outdoor wildlife enclosures that needed to be build and needed to decide on where on the 17 acres they would go. I am very visual person, so I endlessly walked that 17 acres all the while planning in my ...
Read more

Thoughts from a Bog Dweller

Image
Monarch Butterfly on aster   My parents instilled in my brother and me a deep and abiding love for nature.   Don’t worry - I’m not going to tell you that when we were young, we had to walk 10 miles to school, uphill – both ways.   But I will say that the best days of our childhood in the 1960s were spent playing outside, seeing all the life in the creek and all the milkweed in the fields, walking through the woods with our Dad to find – (but never pick! We were taught that too!) - Lady’s Slippers, hearing the whip-poor-will at night, seeing the sky full of bats at dusk, and never wanting the day to end.   We were fortunate, because my parents, both hard workers their entire lives, made time to show us places of incredible beauty, and pass down to us their respect for the environment.   While visiting Luther Marsh and Oliphant Marsh, my Mom never failed to declare, “I love marshes”.   Years later, I discovered that the original meaning of my surname is “Bog ...
Read more