RELIANCE, Tenn. — Dr. Gary Schneider says he’s keeping an eye out for woolly adelgids in the Eastern hemlocks that surround his cabin on Mount Hood near the Hiwassee River.

“I’ve got a huge area of hemlocks behind my cabin,” the Hamilton County resident said. “I haven’t seen any trees dying.”

And he wants to keep it that way. That’s why he and more than 100 others joined a train trip last week that raised money to battle the woolly adelgid (ah-DEL-jid), a fatal invader in hemlock forests. The U.S. Forest Service says it is present from northeastern Georgia to southeastern Maine and west to eastern Tennessee, including the Cherokee National Forest.

The trip on the “Hemlock Express” through the scenic Hiwassee Gorge raised about $10,000, said Linda Caldwell, director of the Tennessee Overhill Heritage Association. Passengers paid $75 apiece, and area businesses helped with sponsorships.

Athens, Tenn., resident Frances Graves said she has an 80-foot tall hemlock in her yard and she’s worried about the spread of the adelgid.

“I brought samples of the branches and found out the tree doesn’t have the adelgid, just a lichen,” Mrs. Graves said with relief.

The pests, originally from Japan, feed on hemlock trees and eventually kill them.

Dr. Pat Parkman is a University of Tennessee-Knoxville professor who is leading the fight to reproduce a predator beetle that eats the destructive bug. He said the beetle controls adelgids in their native lands, but the beetles didn’t make the trip when the adelgids immigrated to the States.

Two beetle types are being reproduced in labs at the University of Tennessee and the researchers hope one or two more varieties can be reproduced.

“The predator beetle strictly feeds on the adelgid,” Forest Service entomologist James “Rusty” Rhea said. He said the adelgid will never be eliminated, but may be controlled.

“We are in a race against time and it is a numbers game,” Mr. Rhea said.

Money raised in from the Hemlock Express will go toward supplying students to work with the lab.

Mr. Rhea said the predator beetles are being released in the national forest areas where the adelgid has just begun to attack the trees.

He said owners of private land with only one or two trees can purchase a chemical at garden stores that is used to soak areas around the tree. He said that will protect a tree for two to three years.

The trip was put together by the Partners of the Cherokee, a nonprofit group that provides support for forest management projects and activities in the Cherokee National Forest.

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