Take a look at our forests, or just the roadsides, as you make your away around the Times News region.

As you travel, take note of all the dead white ash trees. This paper regularly reports downed power lines after a storm, and I’m betting many of the trees that pulled down the lines are dead ash trees.

In the Kittatinny area, and just south of the Lehigh Gap along Route 873, a spongy (gypsy) moth irruption devastated the white, chestnut and red oak trees. There, too, you’ll see many dead snags.

If you drive in the northern portion of Carbon County, Monroe, Pike, Wyoming or Wayne counties, you’ll find another diseased tree species. Where once beautiful and healthy American beech trees dominated, a big threat, beech leaf disease, is hammering them.

The beech trees look very unhealthy, with about half of their leaves remaining. The loss of the beech trees will result in less mast for turkeys, bears and deer, and with a more open canopy, the forest itself will dry and warm more in summer.

Who knows what this will do to forest flowers, plants or even amphibians? As of now, there is no effective control, and this disease is lethal to young trees, which will die in two or three years, and mature trees, which will die in about eight years.

Locally, and throughout much of the Eastern United States, the Eastern hemlock is suffering a similar fate. The woolly adelgid aphid has devastated this very important tree. However, here we can see some hope.

Two predatory beetles, in the Laricobious genus, have been released in sections of the Allegheny National Forest in western and central Pennsylvania. These beetles are native to the Pacific Northwest and Japan, where the adelgids originated, and are released in fall to feed on the adult pests.

Two silver fly species have been, and are being, released in the spring when they feed on the adelgid eggs. Let’s hope there are good results, and these insects will continue to breed naturally, and eventually keep the adelgids under control. I won’t see the results in my lifetime, but maybe future generations will again see towering stands of Pennsylvania’s state tree.

Spongy (gypsy) moths now have natural bio controls working against them and for us. Although much of our beautiful white oak forests have been decimated, maybe future generations will again find these great timber and mast producing trees dominating our forests. Here’s the hope: The caterpillars are affected by two bio factors, the spongy moth virus and spongy moth fungus. The virus infects the caterpillars and eventually causes their deaths.

If you see hundreds of limp caterpillars hanging in an upside-down V shape, the virus killed them. The other natural killer of spongy moth caterpillars is the spongy moth fungus. This was introduced here from Japan.

If all goes as expected, the next generation of caterpillars gets infected, and so on and on. The fungus remains in the soil, and year after year will again infect more caterpillars.

Both of these are helping to control the destruction; however, both the fungus and virus are most evident when there is a population explosion, and much tree damage may be done before the caterpillars die. Hopefully, these will serve to keep spongy moth populations from rebounding in the future.

The American chestnut was devastated by the chestnut blight. Our hope today isn’t in chemical applications but in the efforts to hybridize chestnuts with the Chinese chestnuts. There are pockets of resistant chestnuts trees, and hopes are to gradually reintroduce the hardier trees.

Again, our generation won’t see the results, but someday maybe the forests will again host giant American chestnut trees. (Look for a future column on the chestnuts’ roles, decimation and future hope.)

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: The Eastern hemlock is the state tree, the ruffed grouse the state bird; what is our state insect?

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: The black vulture may sometimes kill young fawns and even lambs.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com