E. Richard Hoebeke, a Cornell 
University entomologist who made the discovery. "I knew this wasn't a 
species native to North America."<br><br>

Entomologists believe the bug could follow in the path of the chestnut 
and elm blights, and end up killing upward of 8 million trees on the 
East Coast, many of them maples. Such a plague would not only be an 
environmental tragedy but spell ruin for much of the tourist and maple 
sugar industries. "If it's happened here, it certainly may rear its 
ugly head once again," Hoebeke said. "It could have a grave, profound 
impact on our nation's forests."<br><br>

In response, some scientists have recommended cutting down numerous 
maples in Brooklyn and Amityville in order to kill the invaders, and
taking whatever steps necessary to stop the bugs from getting off Long 
Island to the mainland. If the insects should advance, they could chew 
their way through approximately 300,000 acres of maple trees up and 
down the East Coast. "Should this beetle escape from Long Island . . . 
the magnitude of damage could far exceed that of any insect, including 
the gypsy moth, in forests, orchards, and in urban areas," warns an 
ominous pest risk-assessment report. The document, prepared
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture along with New York state and 
local governments, contends that more than 800 million trees,
covering 62 per cent of the state's 18.6 million acres of forested 
land, are possible targets of the bug. Potential losses would run
into the billions of dollars. The report continues, "The risk of 
attack in the United States is probably much greater than in China
because we have a greater abundance of ALB's prime food source-
maples."<br><br>

Unfortunately, the discovery of the Brooklyn bug presages a much 
broader threat to America's already dwindling forests. The Asian
longhorn beetle is just one of a new wave of invading pests and 
diseases being brought to American shores, the result of rising-and
increasingly unregulated-foreign trade. Many of these exotic insects 
and fungi-with names like the Asian gypsy moth, the pine bark
beetle, and the Mexican pitch canker-are carried in on foreign logs 
that have been cut down by international companies. These logging
companies have been searching out wood supplies in the heart of the 
world's few remaining primal forests.<br><br>

"One of the real problems," says Fields Cobb Jr., a University of 
California forest pathologist, "is that as we start logging off
the natural forests of the tropics and other remote areas, it will be 
very easy to overlook potentially dangerous pests and diseases.
These agents are very obscure in their native habitats because natural 
forests in diverse ecosystems tend to suppress widespread pest
outbreaks." When these new diseases are brought into the U.S., they 
can destroy not only species but whole ecosystems. The chestnut, for 
example, "was an unsurpassed source of food for wildlife," says Cobb. 
"Dozens of species depended on it, including the bald eagle." In 
addition, Cobb notes, lesser-quality oaks took the place of the
chestnut tree. This opened the way for the emergence of another deadly 
disease called oak wilt, now threatening all the oaks in the
eastern forests, and making those wooded areas much more susceptible 
to the ravages of the gypsy moth.

Imported logs are coming to the U.S. in steadily increasing numbers. 
These logs are replacing the diminished supplies of American timber, 
which have been depleted by overcutting and, ironically, an increase 
in American logs being shipped overseas. The loosening of 
environmentally related trade rules under both GATT and NAFTA has 
brought on this increased exporting of timber.<br><br>

For years the USDA, which regulates the trade in raw logs, has 
maintained a policy of "zero tolerance" when it comes to pest risks in
timber. In recent years, however, the department's Animal and Plant 
Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has eased this blanket prohibition 
and set forth rules for getting rid of the bugs by fumigation with the
pesticide methyl bromide or by a heat treatment. The change in policy 
resulted from the USDA's concern that its regulations "not be applied 
in a manner which would constitute a disguised restriction on 
international trade."<br><br>

Today, international timber companies are importing raw logs from 
Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, and Brazil by truck and ship. Every
day, 12-wheelers roll up I-5, the West Coast's main north-south 
artery, loaded with Mexican pine. Rayonier-an international
forest-products company-imports $1 million worth of timber each month 
to Oregon and California from New Zealand. In addition, it sends daily 
truckloads of uncovered Mexican green lumber up I-5 to company mills 
in Eugene and Prinesville, Oregon. Rayonier also transports Mexican 
lumber by sea to Coos Bay, Oregon.<br><br>

The company operates in 60 countries and owns hundreds of thousands of 
acres of timber in Washington as well as in the southeastern U.S. and 
New Zealand. Katie AmRhein is the manager of New Business Development 
for International Forest Products at Rayonier. In federal district 
court papers, she declared that her company "depends on imported green 
logs, lumber and wood chips as a substantial source of revenue." 
Rayonier expects its imports of green lumber from Mexico to more than 
double to $12 million in 1997. The firm says it is increasing its 
imports because environmental regulations are reducing the amount of 
timber available for commercial purposes in the U.S.<br><br>

But at the same time Rayonier is boosting timber imports, it is also 
increasing the number of potentially dangerous pests in this country. 
An October 1996 report from the USDA's Wood Import Pest Risk 
Assessment Team revealed a variety of pine-eating bugs in logs
imported from southern Mexico by Rayonier.<br><br>

Another international timber giant, the Seattle-based Weyerhauser, 
also imports wood from abroad. David Coburn, the firm's communications 
manager, said the company imported a "partial shipload" of pine logs
from New Zealand earlier this year, which were then turned into a 
clear plywood for certain customers. According to Coburn, Weyerhauser
adhered to a USDA "fumigation schedule" in which the pine was first 
debarked before shipping, then fumigated. "We use methyl bromide in 
New Zealand before logs are shipped," he said.<br><br>

Methyl bromide