| Index | Map:Infected Areas | How it Kills: Stages 1-2 | How it Kills: Stages 3-5 | What's Being Done |
 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. They turned up in Chicago two years ago 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, who first identified the beetle in the U.S. in 1996. "I'm convinced that it's in other metropolitan areas. It's not a question of if, but when, we find them." Next: Map:Infected Areas >> |
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| Sources: USDA; Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service; E. Richard Hoebeke, Cornell University; University of Vermont; Hugh Johnson's Encyclopedia of Trees; TIME Graphic by Lon Tweeten; Text by Jackson Dykman FROM THE MAY 27, 2002 ISSUE OF TIME MAGAZINE; POSTED MONDAY, MAY 20, 2002 |
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