Eight years after Asian longhorned beetles started to slowly kill trees on the North Side, authorities will announce a rare success in the battle against invasive pests.
City, state and federal officials will meet Thursday in the Ravenswood neighborhood to lift a quarantine that led to the destruction of 1,500 trees infested with the imported insects.
Chain saws that stripped parts of the neighborhood of its century-old tree canopy will go silent after two years without a sighting of the black-and-white beetles and their menacing antennae.
“We always feared it would spread throughout the city,” said Joe McCarthy, senior forester in the Chicago Bureau of Forestry. “I’m pleasantly surprised we’re at this point today.”
Officials are reluctant to declare victory. They still are on the watch for beetles around Oz Park, where signs of the beetles were found in three trees almost two years ago.
Asian longhorned beetles frighten forestry experts and arborists across the nation because the insects munch on a variety of trees. The beetles tend to favor maples, chestnuts and other deciduous hardwoods that are common along city streets, including trees planted to replace majestic, arching elms that succumbed to another foreign invader, Dutch elm disease.
The only sure method to stop the beetle from ravaging tree-lined streets and hardwood forests in North America is to cut down and chip infested trees.
Federal officials plan to inject 4,000 Chicago trees this year with bug-killing chemicals, down from nearly 90,000 last year.
