Hang Ups, What Hang Ups?

This was a tricky one

Mark & Luis have been getting a lot of practice pulling down hung up trees this year. This weekend they wanted to tackle a particularly troublesome tree that had broken and was hung up over a footbridge on the Paugussett Trail near Buddington Road.

In keeping with our practice of doing work parties in interesting weather, we went out on Saturday morning when it was 16 degrees and windy to look at it.  We debated whether we should even try to take it down or not.  

In this case, we didn't want the nice boardwalk that was built by the boy scouts to be smashed by the tree when it came down.

The red maple was hung up pretty good and would be tricky to take down.  But Mark felt we could get it and had discussed renting a gas powered pole saw from Home Depot.  We decided to come back Sunday when it was a little warmer and less windy.  

The trunk was pretty messed up, which made the tree difficult to control. 

Sunday came, and it was 6 whopping degrees warmer, but no wind, which was safer.  We started clearing some of the brush around the trees for better footing and escape routes.  Bill Dyer is taking out dead branches overhead with his electric pole saw to avoid having things crash down on us.  Bill also had his ice spikes on for better footing on the frozen ground.

Mark & Luis rented a 14' gas-powered trimming saw from Home Depot in Derby for $50.14 for 4 hours.

 The saw cut well and Mark was able to notch the tree from both sides.

Mark cut the tree while Luis and the rest of us were watching the trunk for any movement, from a safe distance.

 Mark kept offering to let us cut too, but we said "No, you've got this".

Bill and Bob were offering advice and encouragement from the peanut gallery.  "You're doing great Mark, keep going".

The tree was very persistent, and despite having most of the trunk cut thru did not want to come down.  Mark is using a little body english to cut into the shattered trunk.

It was very tiring holding up the saw.  Later  Mark discovered that the Echo saw was not extended it's full length and could be about 2' longer.  It made it a little more awkward to control, but allowed some more cutting near the top of the tree.

The trunk did finally move, but we decided to throw a rope over the tree and pull it down as a safer means to finish the tree.

The rope did the trick.  With four of us pulling on it, the tree came down with a thunderous crash.  

The main trunk embedded in the swamp just before the boardwalk. 

A piece of the trunk bounded off some logs that we had placed on the boardwalk to protect it.

The boardwalk survived unscathed, as did we.  We did learn a lot with this new experience:

• Never use a ladder on a frozen pond with a chainsaw.
• Wearing micro-spikes in helpful in the wintertime.
  
• Renting a gas-powered pole saw and working from the ground can be safe.
• Some hung up trees maybe should be left in place.
• Always look up when you're out in the woods.
• It's good to have a team to watch the tree move and offer encouraging advice.
• Rope can be your friend.
  

It was another successful work party.  Mark will probably sleep well tonight after all the work using the pole saw.  Thanks to Bill, Mark, Luis, Bob & Terry for helping out.  

Now for the Groundhog Day Nor'easter that's blowing in tomorrow.

Ash Tree Status from Hearst Papers

There was a sad, but thorough article in this morning's CT Post on the death of all the ash trees in Connecticut.  The Emerald Ash Borer is wiping out most of them, which is causing a lot of damage to our trails, roads, and utility lines, as well as other impacts.  Ash trees were a big component of the Northeast's forests, and a valuable tree for ecology and lumber.

  

Another dead ash tree from Boehm Pond Trail - 2019

The Shelton Trails Committee has had to spent a lot of volunteer time in the last couple of years clearing trail blow-downs, or fixing damage from dying ash trees.  It's too bad because a really nice tree in our state was wiped out almost overnight.  Many towns, cities, the State, utility companies, and property owners have spent large sums clearing tree damage from this invasive pest.    Hopefully, the control measures that are discussed in the article will help future generations of ash trees recover somewhat. 

The link to the CT Post article by Robert Miller is here, and a copy of the article is below.

Robert Miller: The CT fight against an invasive beetle that’s killed millions of trees

Robert Miller Jan. 23, 2021 Updated: Jan. 23, 2021 7:06 p.m.

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1of5Matt Bartelme holds on his finger an emerald ash borer, a tree-killing pest, found on an ash tree at a Danbury home, Friday, March 11, 2016.Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

2of5Matt Bartelme examines a ash tree infested with emerald ash borer, a tree-killing pest, at a Danbury home, Friday, March 11, 2016.Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

3of5Matt Bartelme point to an emerald ash borer, a tree-killing pest, found on an ash tree at a Danbury home, Friday, March 11, 2016.Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

With the battle lost, the federal government is admitting what everybody knew — the emerald ash borer controls the field.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Dec. 15 that the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will no longer try to use federal quarantines to control the spread of the invasive and highly destructive beetle.

Because the borer has now pretty much infiltrated all states east of the Mississippi River, killing about 35 million ash trees from Louisiana to New England along the way, the decision was expected.

“It doesn’t make sense to continue,” said Claire Rutledge, an associate agricultural scientist in the entomology department of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

However, now the borer is here, new local fights against it are beginning using biological controls.

Rutledge and other entomologist’s are releasing three species of tiny parasitic wasps that feed on and destroy the borers’ eggs. The hope is that in a decade or two, when ash trees start to grow back, the wasps will have lowered the beetle’s numbers enough to let new ash trees survive.

Rutledge said there are 18 sites in the state where the agricultural experiment station has released the wasps, including places in Sherman, Kent, Weston and Litchfield. The wasps are wintering over and spreading. Initial research shows they’re also doing their work to reduce ash borer numbers.

“It seems to be working,” she said. “Those little wasps are doing a bang-up job.“

Alas, the program comes too late for the beautiful, straight-grained ash trees growing alongside town roads or planted for shade in cities - trees whose seeds feed birds and moths, whose wood is great for ax handles, hockey sticks, furniture and flooring, and whose fall foliage adds a dark reddish-purple swatch to the landscape.

They’re pretty much lost. The emerald ash borer — which is a native to China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and far eastern Russia — and which somehow showed up in Michigan in 2002 and has spread ever since — is killing them all.

Female borers lay their eggs on ash tree bark. When the eggs hatch into larvae, the larvae bores into the tree and feeds on the inner bark and cambium — the cells between a tree’s wood and its bark — cutting channels into the tree. Those channels girdle a tree, preventing water and nutrients to reach its branches. The infestation can kill a tree within two years.

Woodpeckers then show up to peel away the infested tree’s bark to feed on the larvae. When you see an ash tree with pale yellow stripes and blotches, you know woodpeckers have been at work and that the tree is a goner.

The agricultural experiment station’s researchers found the shiny green beetles in New Haven County, Connecticut in 2012. By now, they’ve spread across the entire state.

“Pretty much every ash tree is gone — 95 to 98 percent are dying,” said Michael McCarthy, Newtown’s tree warden.

“It’s out of control,” said Michel Boucher, New Milford’s tree warden. His town has removed 400 dead ash trees along town roads in the past year, he said.

“They’re all shot,” said Kevin Lindquist, owner of Danbury Tree Pro.

Because ash trees thrive in open spaces, they grow well along roadsides. The cost to towns of cutting down all those dying ashes is another form of emerald ash borer damage - this time to town budgets.

“It will be horrendous,” Newtown’s McCarthy said.

Matt Bartelme, owner of Bart’s Tree Service in Danbury, said that because the emerald ash borer doesn’t spread rapidly on its own — humans moving beetle-infested firewood are its chief means of transport — you can find the occasional healthy ash tree in the woods.

“It’s as if it’s in its own little quarantine,” he said.

Bartelme also said you can track the infestation in the state year by year. Right now, he said, there are still healthy ash trees in coastal towns like Westport and Darien — the borer simply hasn’t spread there yet.

Rutledge, of the experiment station, said that young ash trees’ need for open air and sun may pay off in the future. When big infested, diseased ash trees fall, she said, that will create a hole in the forest canopy, allowing seedlings or trunk sprouts to thrive.

“They’re pretty good truck sprouters,” she said.

Throw in parasitic wasps and there may be hope for an ash tree comeback.

“It’s my prediction,” Rutledge said. “I think there’s a chance for ash trees.”

Contact Robert Miller at earthmattersrgm@gmail.com

Robert Miller

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Robert Miller has been working as a reporter in western Connecticut since 1978. He has covered the environment for about half that time. In 2014, he retired from day-to-day reporting, but has continued to write a weekly column on the environment for The News-Times in Danbury. He's a birder and a gardener and a bookworm who lives in the exurbs - the rural suburbs. He thinks the world we live in -- even his tiny corner -- is an endlessly fascinating place and he has been very lucky to write about it.

Frosty Trail Hardening at Birchbank

 A portion of the Birchbank Trail in the White Hills had turned into a real mud bog due to groundwater seeping out.  At some times it was so bad people just sat down and refused to walk thru it.

Bernie was waiting for us to start

So since this week in January was so mild we decided to tackle some drainage work.  Whoops, things froze up on Friday night.  Mark got started a little earlier than the rest of us and cleared up a birch blow down with the chainsaw further up the hill on the Blue/White connector prior to the beginning of playing in the mud.

It was 24 degrees out Saturday morning and what had been seeping mud was frozen stiff.  But, we brought pick axes, rock bars, trail hoes, shovels and other Instruments of Destruction.  With some digging and probing we were able to pry some frozen rocks loose, dig out the muckiest spots, and place the rocks to harden the trail.

 Lucky for us Shelton is blessed with rocks.  There were a lot to choose from here, but we had to do some prospecting to get the most suitable ones.  Some even had flat faces.  It was kinda like a trails jigsaw puzzle seeing which rocks went together to make some sound footing.

We hardened a number of the wettest spots along the trail.  We also cleared out drainage ditches to let water cross the trail easier.

Bill dug out a slight relocation on the North side of the stream to hopefully get some dryer footing in this stretch.  A few trail users came thru while we were working and liked the improvements.

It was a good morning's work.   The rocks will shift a bit to settle in when the frost melts.  Let's see how it works the next time it rains.  Thanks to Graham, Ellen, Mark, Bill, and Terry for coming out on a chilly morning.  We have two work parties in in January 2021 - we're off to a good start.