Margot Wallston

Partial Transcript: My name is Margot Wallston, and I am the coordinator of the Hemlock Restoration Initiative, which is a program of WNC Communities. That's a nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina. And we receive funding and support from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service, forest health protection branch.
So one of our main efforts is to be able to chemically protect as many hemlock stands as we can in North Carolina, from the invasive hemlock wooly adelgid, which has been decimating hemlock populations from Georgia all the way up into Canada.
So we are working with the Wildlife Resource Commission here, who manages the Green River Game Lands, to go out and find hemlocks that can still benefit from chemical treatment while we wait for longer-term solutions to replace chemical treatment. And the Green River Game Lands—we started working here in 2016, in February. And so over the past two years, we have been able to treat six—over 6,000 trees, just within the game lands, focusing on the trees that are along the Green River and the tributaries that feed into the Green River because that's where hemlocks serve some of the highest ecological function.
So hemlock trees are very important for our stream—our water quality and quantity because they shade the rivers. They also stabilize the banks. And they provide a lot of regulation for annual flow. Since they are active at times of year when all the deciduous trees are not, they're able to really balance out how much water we have at any give time. They're also important for a lot of terrestrial and aquatic species. So no other tree can do the same job that they do. They're considered a foundation species for these areas where they grow. And so if we lose them all, things are going to change dramatically here.
Today, we're out with a dedicated group of paddlers that go under the name PHHAT, which is the Paddlers Health Hemlock Action Task Force. And Alex Harvey, who you should talk to later, is the main driver behind getting these guys to come out and steward the land around the rivers that they love to paddle.
0:02:23 So I grew up learning how to canoe on this river. It's always been important to me. And it's really nice to see how important the quality of this river is for other folks.
So the benefit of being able to work with these paddler is that they can get to areas of the game lands that we cannot easily access by foot. And some of the most important trees, the big monster giant trees that are growing near the river in those inaccessible areas, are some of the most important, that we wouldn't otherwise be able to—be able to, uh, assist through our tools that we have available.
So we do a lot of our treatments via land, and we often work with volunteers to get that work done. But this is special because we get to do it by boat. Yeah.

Partial Transcript: Well, as I was mentioning earlier, without any management or intervention, most trees will succumb, within four to seven or so years, to this tiny little invasive insect, the hemlock wooly adelgid. It's a—it's a—it's a mini-insect, but it has a monstrous impact. And so we want to protect our hemlocks.
And in the residential setting, because they're beautiful trees, sometimes hundreds of years old, that give us privacy, that just give us appreciation for just their aesthetic values. But out in this type of environment, it's really their ecosystem services that they provide. So as I was mentioning, they're a foundation tree for the—that drive the ecosystems where they grow.
In North Carolina, we have two different species. We have eastern hemlocks, which are also called Canada hemlocks or Canadian hemlocks. And then, we have Carolina hemlocks. And while Carolina and eastern hemlocks tend to grow in slightly different habitats, the thing that's really neat about Carolina hemlocks is they grow pretty much nowhere else in the world. So western North Carolina has the majority of Carolina hemlocks.
Today, we're focusing on eastern hemlocks because they're the ones that typically grow along the waterways, along our headwater streams and, um, keep our stream temperatures cool, like I was mentioning, provide year-round habitat because they are evergreen trees. So they are able to provide habitat even in the winter when most other trees have lost their leaves. They provide, like, a little mini igloo kind of environment for our small terrestrial critters and friends.

Partial Transcript: . So one big thing that concerns the boaters is that you will end up having them fall and block our waterways, which creates hazards for the users of the river. It also can create situations where there might be floods, with them breaking free and massive amounts of water being released at once.
They also, since they do sort of, um—sorry, I always stumble on this [laughs 0:05:47] part. But because they are impacting the amount of water that—the volume of water in the river over the course of a year if you were—if they were to be replaced by other deciduous trees, you might have some more winter peak storm events that would result in increased flooding.
They impact the pH levels. They're involved with nutrient cycling in the water, so you'd be impacting the brook trout and the hellbenders and some of the other more charismatic species that we think about when we think about our mountain streams.

Partial Transcript: So chestnuts were not exclusively or primarily, predominantly along river corridors. They were up in sort of what we now see as oak hickory forests. And so the main value of chestnuts was, actually, for their masts. So they were hugely important for wildlife and then, also, for our—for people's livestock, who would feed on the chestnuts, and for people to eat too. The lumber was considered very valuable. So they had more of a tie into the livelihoods of—a direct tie into the livelihoods of people and the ability to feed, um, the—feed the whole community of—the human and animal community.
They did not have, as I understand, the same kind of ecosystem services for rivers that our hemlocks have. They're a hardwood species, so they fall into that category. Whereas our hemlocks are very—another thing that's unique about our hemlocks is that they are one of our tallest evergreen species and very shade tolerant. So they can grow in the dense canopy of a forest, especially in these deep ravines like we have here in the Green River Gorge. They can grow and maintain their place in the understory for hundreds of years before they have the opportunity to then emerge and become a dominant tree in the canopy. They live for hundreds of years. So they have that role that the chestnuts—they were up on the slopes and ridges and more exposed to sun, could grow up faster and stronger.
The other difference between the chestnut story and the hemlock story is that there's actually a little bit more hope and promise for hemlocks because the blight that impacted the chestnuts is found on other species. It can survive on oaks and other species without killing those trees. So it's—it's always ubiquitous in the landscape. The hemlock wooly adelgid is only able to survive on hemlock trees. So if we are able to reduce the hemlock wooly adelgid population by protecting our hemlocks, then we will not have as large of an assault repeated over time.
We have tools that we know work to minimize hemlock wooly adelgid on individual trees, and now, thanks to the effort of these programs and organizations, on entire strands of trees. There is not that same kind of tool to be able to protect a chestnut from the chestnut blight.

Partial Transcript: Well, the first thing that we do when we go out to treat a stand of trees is to take a moment to look at each tree to make sure that it is healthy enough to be able to respond to the treatment that we are doing. If it's not, then we have to pass by that one. So we do a quick evaluation, make sure that it has potential.
We will measure the diameter of the tree, and that tells us how much chemical to apply to the tree. And in most situations, when we are doing land-based treatments, we will do a soil drench treatment, which is very easy and accessible for individual landowners to do. When we're doing the boating-based treatments, we are actually using a little tablet or pellet, and we're inserting them into the ground at the base of the tree where the feeder roots, where they will dissolve with rainwater, and then the feeder roots will be able to take that up from the ground and distribute it out to the crown, where it will come into contact with the adelgid that's sucking on the tree at the tips of the needles. Hopefully, you'll get a chance to see that in action today.

Partial Transcript: So we often hear the comments from individual landowners or the public or visitors, "Oh, it's such a shame what's happened to the hemlocks. All the hemlocks are dead. All my hemlocks are dead." And that's not the story we see. When we are out in the woods across western North Carolina, we see stands that are intact and have potential. They've been hanging on.
Trees in the understory—people often forget to look in the understory. We see the grey—what they call the grey ghosts, which are big, beautiful hemlocks that were the first and the most vulnerable to succumb. And they stand out because they rise above the rest of the canopy in the forest. But underneath, there is another generation of hemlocks that look great. And so when we see those, we know there's something there to work with.
The other thing that always brings me promise is seeing just how effective chemical treatment can be. You go out to a stand where a portion of the trees were treated and the rest were not, and the ones that were treated look beautiful. Even ten years later, without a second treatment, follow-up treatment, they still look so much better. And so we know that that's a tool that we have that works.
Another thing that I would say makes me excited and shows potential is our integration of chemical control with the biological component. And we have been working with the State and with the Federal Government to release predator beetles, among other biological controls, to recreate a natural predator-prey balance. So the idea with that is that we'll be able to sort of pull our finger off of the trigger with the chemical treatments, as the biological populations—that the predator populations increase to the point where they're not going to eliminate the hemlock wooly adelgid, but they will keep it at a level that is low enough to keep the trees from declining. So in areas where there are native predators for hemlock wooly adelgid, such as the Pacific Northwest and other—other hemlock species in Asia, where this pest came from, originally, you don't see the same impacts of hemlock wooly adelgid. They're on the trees but at low levels, and that's because, we think, there is a natural predator-prey balance, perhaps working in combination with some other factors that we're also pursuing for our—for our long-term strategies for hemlock restoration.

Partial Transcript: I didn't say this earlier, the reason that this program exists—it's been around since 2014. And the reason it exists is because of the foresight of our commissioner of agriculture, Steve Troxler, who decided to put some funding aside, some money aside just to work on preserving our hemlocks in our state. So if it weren't for his investment and that infusion of funding, we would not be able to work with such amazing teams the way we are today. So it's really exciting. We've been able to see a resurgence of energy and interest from the public, from different users, like the paddlers and the hikers, and from our state—we've been able to work with our state agencies, as well as nonprofits, to be able to get more done in our state. So that's awesome. Yeah.