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Article: Dry trees draw beetles.
- Article from:
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Article date:
- July 8, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Jul. 8--HILLSBORO -- Carl Schmidt tramped deep into the forest Thursday afternoon over a carpet of pine needles and wild grasses. A fawn skittered into the brush. Schmidt paused in a grove of hundred-foot-high loblolly pine trees.
"We're already in a bug spot. See how the needles there are yellowing?" he said, pointing further down the hillside to another stand of pines. "And this is just the beginning of pine beetle time. What will happen by the end of the summer, let alone next year?"
Schmidt manages the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, a task consumed this summer by the need to prevent the Southern pine beetle from chewing up the park's trees. The ...