WORRY LIST - Tiny Insect Killing Hemlocks

(12/18/2009)

A pesky little insect is doing nasty things in the United States to Hemlocks, and the varmint is now striking trees in the Mountain State.

It's called the hemlock wooly adelgid.

The insect which looks like tiny cotton-like balls on the underside of Hemlock needles (see photo above) first showed up in the United States from Asia back in the 1950s.

It reached West Virginia in 2004.

"It can kill-off all of the Hemlock trees, and it's already killed off 80 percent of the Hemlock trees in the Shenandoah," said Rodney Bartgis with the Nature Conservatory.

A goal is to stop the insect from ruining West Virginia's forests as it has in other states.