On February 23, the Environmental Leadership Center at North Georgia College & State University hosted a grand opening for its new Predator Beetle Lab, designed for researchers to raise beetles to help preserve the hemlock tree population of north Georgia. The predator beetles eat tiny invasive insects from Asia, called hemlock wooly adelgids, or HWAs, which are killing the hemlock population.

“Hemlock trees are vital members of our mountain ecosystems,” says Dr. Robert Fuller, the founder of NGCSU’s Predator Beetle Lab, only the third such lab in the state. “Hemlocks are most commonly found in moist environments near rivers and streams, where they provide shade for the streams and help stabilize the riparian soil along the stream banks. The trees provide food and habitat for hundreds of species in their ecosystem.”

Young Harris College and the University of Georgia house the state’s other two beetle labs. They are also studying the HWA problem, which entered Georgia in 2003. Fuller says the HWA infestation first appeared in Dahlonega in 2005.

The decimation of other Hemlock tree populations in the United States has left soil exposed to erosion and once cool trout streams exposed and warmed by the summer sun.

“HWAs are here, and experience has shown that it can kill our hemlocks in as little as three years,” Fuller says.

In November, he discovered HWAs for the first time along the Etowah River just north of the Ranger Camp, and one of his students discovered them along the Chestatee River just upstream of Highway 52 East.

Sara Osicka, the new lab coordinator, says the predator beetles will be raised in the lab and then released by the Georgia Forest Service. She would like to monitor the beetles’ progress in the local ecosystem and involve undergraduate students with the lab’s work.
The first beetle eggs were laid the week of Jan. 21, and Fuller hopes to have mature beetles ready for release to the forest in March.

“While there are a few native predators that will eat HWAs, none attack it rapidly enough to significantly slow its advance,” says Fuller. “The only known long-term protection is to introduce predator beetles from Asia that keep HWAs in check there.”

The NGCSU applied research facility, located on Sunset Drive, was funded through the Georgia General Assembly.