Source: Ben Ledbetter, WFAE, 4/29/18


Insects can certainly be pests, but one invasive group is threatening to wipe out a ubiquitous species of trees in Western North Carolina, a process conservation groups are fighting to stop. The hemlock woolly adelgid arrived in the U.S. from Japan in the 1920s. The pest feeds off sap or starches in the hemlock tree. An adelgid stays stationary, disrupting the flow of nutrients to a tree’s needles and causing the hemlock to die within four to 10 years, according to the Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina.

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