Meet The Beetles

By Jackson Dykman

With its hardened shell and oversize antennae, it looks like a cockroach with antlers. But the Asian long-horned beetle is no ordinary menace. It's a hungry tree-eating machine with no natural predators and a hankering for U.S. hardwoods-maple, poplar, birch, elm, ash, horse chestnut and willow. The first specimens came to the U.S. as stowaways in wooden packing crates from China and Hong Kong. The beetles turned up in Brooklyn, N.Y., six years ago, in Chicago two years later and in New York City's Central Park this winter, and have already destroyed thousands of trees. If they get loose in the rest of the country, damage could exceed $650 billion. "It's the greatest threat to U.S. forestry since the gypsy moth," says entomologist E. Richard Hoebeke of Cornell University. "I'm convinced that it's in other metropolitan areas. It's not a question of if, but when, we find them."