Fourth grade students at Marshwood Great Works School are playing an important role in the fight against the woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that is killing or damaging hemlock trees throughout Maine.
As part of the school’s Outdoor Education Program, all the nearly 150 fourth-graders collected data last fall at sites in South Berwick and Eliot to determine the extent of the woolly adelgid’s local infestation. The data was passed on to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, which is seeking to develop tools to eliminate the pest.
“We’ve been to places like Vaughan Woods State Park and Great Works Regional Land Trust properties such as Goodwin Forest to identify hemlock trees that have been harmed by the woolly adelgid,” said Sara Allis, an educator at Great Works School.
The adelgid, a tiny insect native to Asia that attacks species of hemlock but not other conifers, has been detected in 20 states. In 2022, adelgids were found in forests in more than 60 towns in southern and coastal Maine, according to the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
Allis and Wendy Shaw, both reading intervention specialists at Great Works, are managing the Outdoor Education Program and the woolly adelgid project.
The outdoor program is funded by a $140,000 grant they secured from the state Department of Education, part of the $16.9 million in federal funds Maine received from a U.S. Department of Education Rethink K-12 Education Models Grant.
The adelgid project involved the students seeking signs of infestation, which present in the form of small, woolly sacs at the base of hemlock branch needles. “The woolly adelgid takes sap from the needles, and the hemlock trees die off,” Shaw explained.
The importance of hemlock trees to wilderness ecosystems is huge. They provide vital shelter for wildlife from New England’s winter storms and, during the summer, cool shade for these creatures when temperatures rise.
Hemlocks also help regulate stream flows and water temperature; minimize nitrates and nutrient runoff from gardening and agricultural products; and improve overall water quality for humans and wildlife.
According to Meggie Harvey of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Monitoring Project, the efforts of the 9- and 10-year-old Great Works students have been “invaluable.”
“The Marshwood students are doing fantastic volunteering,” said Harvey. “They’ve provided accurate, clear data on how hemlock trees in their area are being affected. Thanks to them, we’re seeing how some hemlock trees are holding out while others are succumbing to the woolly adelgid.”
The data students collected is also proving vital in the pursuit of solutions, Harvey said, indicating where the institute should release predators of the adelgid and where the predators are not needed.
“Student data will help us slow the spread of this invasive pest, and give us the time we need to develop even more solutions to this problem,” she said.
Participation in the project has also had positive results for the children. Shaw noted that students are encouraged to offer feedback about the program, and she cited one student’s comment in particular: “It showed us that kids can do big things.”
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