The SUNY-ESF Technology Combat Asian Long-Horn Beetles in NY Forests project proactively baits and kills or neuters Asian Long-Horn Beetles before they breed and lay their eggs using confirmed combinations of activated female pheromones and host volatiles discovered, identified and synthesized by this effort are attractive to male beetles. The project offers an elegant; pre-emptive and technical solution to avert a true economic and environmental crisis in New York.

The funding offers a pre-emptive and technical solution to avert a true economic and environmental crisis in New York by saving the surrounding forests.

In 2007, ALB was found on Staten and Pall’s Island in New York. Most recently, beetles were detected in Worcester, Massachusetts in August 2008. By 4/1/2009, Worcester area cut down 30,000 trees in an effort to keep the beetle from spreading.  While other methods are being explored, chopping down infested trees and burning the wood is currently the only way to eradicate the beetles which have no known natural predator in the U.S. New York State’s land area is 30.22 million acres, 61% or 18.46 million acres, is forested.  Northern Hardwoods including Elm/Ash/Red Maple make-up 56% of New York’s forest.

The trees preferred as hosts by the Asian Long-Horned Beetle are these hardwoods, which also compose the majority of the Northeast United States mixed hardwood forests critical to New York rural economic vitality and the forest products and wood-based renewable energy industries, New York State water quality, sequestration of carbon and greenhouse gases known to contribute to climate change.