Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 11/30/2021 12:39:37 PM
Red pines around the Wilton reservoir are coming down next month, as the Conservation Commission seeks to get ahead of a blight affecting trees in the surrounding communities.
Bart Hunter, chair of the Conservation Commission, said the commission recommended to the Select Board that the trees be taken down and sold while they still retain some value, and as part of an upcoming effort to develop trails on the town-owned property.
Red pines aren’t native to New Hampshire, Hunter explained, having been planted in the state starting in the 1960s after the native white pine began to be infected by a weevil. The hope was red pine might supplement or replace white pine as a timber tree, but it never thrived in the New Hampshire environment as well as its native counterpart.
“They came from Norway, and they didn’t do that well in the states,” Hunter said. “It’s rare to find one more than 6 or 8 inches in diameter, where a white pine of the same age might be 18 inches in diameter.”
Currently, Hunter said the red pines around the reservoir appear to be healthy, but there are looming environmental threats to that species of tree in the form of an infection and an invasive insect that could devalue the wood’s use as timber.
Scleroderris canker, caused by a fungus, has caused the death of conifers in the Northeast and north central United States and Canada. The European strain, which has been found in New England, can attack mature red pine and Scots pine trees.
Red pines are also prone to infection by the red pine scale, a tiny insect that has been present in New England since the late 1930s. The red pine scale crawls beneath the tree bark and sucks sugars and the tree’s natural metabolic products, disrupting the transfer of nutrients from the needles to the rest of the tree.
“It hasn’t arrived that we know of in Wilton yet, but is in Peterborough and Mason and the communities around us. It’s a matter of time, and when it happens, it can move rapidly, and kill a tree in a few years,” Hunter said. “Once they are infected and die, they are not of any value as timber.”
A number of the red pines in the area around the reservoir were knocked down during the catastrophic December 2008 ice storm, Hunter said, but a good number still remain.
Wilton has approved funds for some development around the reservoir to make it more accessible as a recreation spot for swimming, canoeing and fishing. The Conservation Commission hopes to develop a new trail on the property, Hunter said, and as they were exploring the layout for a new trail, they began to assess whether the red pine should come down and be sold as timber before it is infected.
Hunter said the town intends to start the harvest in December.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.
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