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The voracious Southern pine beetle has eaten through 5 acres already and threatens Whispering Pines Park.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 20, 2001
INVERNESS -- They've already munched through 5 acres of loblolly pine trees along U.S. 41 N, in a patch of state-owned land just north of Prestige Home Center.
Now the voracious Southern pine beetles, the same deadly pests that have ravaged thousands of trees over the past two years in Hernando County, could be setting their sights on the city-owned Whispering Pines Park less than 100 yards away.
"They tend to go in one direction. North is some hardwood hammocks and a construction business, so they can't go further north," said Aaron Neville, the Citrus County forester for the state Division of Forestry. "We're concerned (the beetles) could go to the west, which would lead right into Whispering Pines Park."
But not if Neville and other state officials can help it.
After discovering the infestation of the tree-killing critters Oct. 9, the state Division of Forestry made plans to clear cut its 10-acre property abutting Whispering Pines Park within the next few weeks. The plan is to remove the sick trees and the surrounding healthy ones, stopping the sand grain-sized pests before they can spread any further.
"There are some nice loblollies and long leaf (pines) in Whispering Pines Park, and we wouldn't want to have to go in there and cut anything unless we had to," Neville said.
City officials are keeping a watchful eye on the project. For now, all they can do is "hope for the best," according to a Nov. 15 memo City Manager Frank DiGiovanni wrote to City Council.
"If left alone, the beetles will move into the fenced area of what we know to be Whispering Pines Park," DiGiovanni says in his memo. "If that was to occur, the situation will be unmanageable."
The bark-eating beetles prey first on trees weakened by sickness or the drought, but they can overtake healthy trees and kill them in a matter of days. The trees try to push out the beetles by gushing extra sap, but it's usually too late: The beetles have already created a labyrinth of channels in the trunk and deposited a bluish fungus that will eat whatever the tiny bugs leave behind.
The miniature predators have created epidemic infestations in other parts of the state, most notably in Hernando County, where the state's worst pine beetle infestation killed more than 5,000 acres of trees over the past two years.
Citrus County has escaped the epidemic relatively unscathed. This year, the county has had only 39 outbreaks totaling 80 acres, according to a Division of Forestry report released Oct. 23.
Two of those active spots, totaling about 1.5 acres, are in the Citrus tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest. Trees in those areas will also be removed soon, Neville said.
"Citrus (County) hasn't been bad," he said. "It's got a couple of spots here and there, but most of it is fading into inactive."