Sixty-seven more acres of evergreen stands threatened by the invasive Hemlock Wooly Adelgid were treated with pesticides in 2024, Allison McKenna told the Lake George Park Commission at its February 25 meeting.
McKenna serves as “boots on the ground” for the groups that comprise the Lake George Hemlock Coalition, which was formed to respond to HWA in the lake’s watershed, said LGPC executive director Dave Wick.
“Allie coordinates the surveys, the treatments and the field data collection in the Lake George Watershed,” said Wick, who helped establish the coalition with leaders of the Lake George Land Conservancy, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the NYS Hemlock Initiative and the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program (APIPP), among others. “She knows what’s happening here in the Lake George area.”
Although less than a year old, the Coalition has already begun to coordinate research, surveys, treatments, long-term planning and public outreach, APIPP stated in its annual report, released February 26.
McKenna, a Research Support Specialist with the Cornell University-based New York State Hemlock Initiative, said the 2024 chemical treatments were performed by the DEC and the research lab for which she works.
Surveys and Chemical Treatments
With the assistance of the DEC and APIPP-trained volunteers, the NYS Hemlock Initiative also surveyed nearly 3000 acres of the Lake George watershed and inspected more than 8,000 trees for signs of HWA just in 2024, McKenna said.
While McKenna and the DEC focused its efforts on state-owned Forest Preserve lands, the Lake George Land Conservancy monitored hemlock stands on roughly 4,300 acres of its own preserves for HWA and other invasive pests, said Monica Dore, the organization’s Conservation Project Manager.
Leah Smisloff, the LGLC’s Conservation Project Assistant, said she will resume monitoring the preserves this month.
“There’s a lot of ground of ground to cover, but we try to cover every preserve every year,” said Mike Horn, the LGLC’s executive director.
McKenna said the areas treated with pesticides in 2024 included Forest Preserve lands at Red Rock Bay on the lake’s east shore and the Northwest Bay slopes of Tongue Mountain.
Insecticides were applied to infested trees as well as to adjacent healthy trees so as to provide long-term protection from HWA, stated the DEC in a press release about the treatments.
According to the DEC, insecticides are, at present, the most effective method of controlling HWA. Two different insecticides, one affording the tree long-term protection, the other fast-acting, killing the insect before it can reproduce, are applied to bark near the base of the tree and absorbed through its tissue. When HWA attaches itself to the tree to feed, it receives a dose of the pesticide and is killed.
The long-lasting insecticide, Imidacloprid, provides trees with as much as seven years’ worth of residual protection. Some but not all trees were treated with the fast-acting dinotefuran. Where Elongate hemlock scale (EHS) is present, the insecticides treated that infestation as well. According to the DEC, EHS is an invasive insect that causes additional stress to trees infested by HWA.
“We hope these pesticide treatments will protect the hemlocks while we develop biological controls and see them established in the Lake George watershed,” McKenna told the Lake George Park Commission.
Biological Controls
According to McKenna, biological controls offer the best hope of eliminating HWA as a permanent threat to the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Once established, these populations of beetles and silver flies will expand and spread beyond the original points of introduction, becoming a permanent check on Hemlock Wooly Adelgid.
The Lake George Land Conservancy’s Clark Hollow Bay Preserve, on the lake’s northeastern shore, is among the places where the insects have been released.
It will be at least a few years before scientists will know if the insects have established themselves as a permanent population, said Mike Horn.
McKenna said she expects the DEC and the NYS Hemlock Initiative to treat an even larger area of the Lake George watershed with pesticides than it did in 2024.
New Funding
At its February 25 meeting, the Lake George Park Commission voted to appropriate $30,000 to defray the costs of hiring two seasonal technicians to survey and, where appropriate, treat Lake George hemlock stands for HWA.
The East Shore Schroon Lake Association has contributed an additional $10,000 to that effort, Dave Wick told the Commissioners.
While HWA has yet to reach Schroon Lake, it is all but inevitable that it will, sooner or later, said Gary Karl, the vice-president of the association.
“These bugs don’t recognize jurisdictional limits,” said Karl. “The east shore of Schroon Lake, which is as hemlock heavy as Lake George watershed, is roughly one-half mile from Lake George, and we view HWA as an existential threat to our watershed.”
Karl said the East Shore Schroon Lake Association hopes that its contribution to the Lake George Hemlock Coalition’s efforts will help slow the spread of HWA, while, at the same time, strengthening partnerships between organizations on the two lakes.
According to Dave Wick, the Lake George Park Commission’s Marine Patrol will assist with the surveys around Lake George, inspecting state-owned islands for HWA.
Priority Hemlock Areas
McKenna said this year’s surveys will include lands identified by the Lake George Hemlock Coalition as priority hemlock areas – those determined to be vital to the protection of water quality, the prevention of erosion and the preservation of wildlife habitat.
The boundaries of those areas may be adjusted as information retrieved from the coalition’s spatial analysis is compared with field conditions as reported by survey crews such as those led by McKenna, APIPP stated.
