Star Tribune
Pheromones from tiny beetles could help save Minnesota’s tamarack trees
The first sign of an attack is usually a smell, an aroma that can be quite pleasant, like a freshly cut Christmas tree. It emanates from some of the deepest swamps and most hidden recesses of Minnesota’s forests. But along with that aroma, there is something else in the air, something sweet to a destructive type of bark beetle. It’s a trail of pheromones signaling that it is time to feast.
Scientists at the University of Minnesota have identified the chemicals and compounds that eastern larch beetles produce to communicate with one other. The hope is that those compounds can be manipulated to disrupt that communication and slow an outbreak of the swarming insect that has killed tens of millions of tamarack trees in Minnesota.
“We know a lot more now about how these beetles attack trees and signal to each other and find mates than we ever did before,” said Brian Aukema, a forestry entomologist at the University of Minnesota whose lab has been leading research into the outbreak. “We’re refining and refining our understanding, and if we can understand exactly how this communication signal is working, then we can use it in tree protection.”
Until the last few years, little was known about the eastern larch beetle, and it had never been enough of a problem to merit deep study. The native beetle is found everywhere tamaracks are found, and it had lived in relative harmony with the Minnesota pine trees for some 14,000 years, since the glaciers retreated from the last ice age.
The reason for the outbreak, Aukema’s lab found, is that the winters had become shorter and less severe. The beetles here at the very southern range of the boreal forest now have just enough warm days between deep freezes to reproduce multiple times. Healthy tamaracks can typically fend off one generation of young larvae. But they’re defenseless against two or more.
![This photograph of rain droplets collecting in the needles of a tamarack tree, was created using an Olympus TG-870 point and shoot camera. ] Macro Photography Story
brian.peterson@startribune.com
Minneapolis, MN 10/04/16](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/3KHOICMW3FEDKMNHWRN463VVZQ.jpg?&w=712)
Rain collects on the needles of a tamarack tree. (Brian Peterson/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Scientists have been racing to understand the once-benign beetle to see if there is anything that can be done to keep tamaracks in Minnesota as the climate continues to warm. Disrupting their communication may be one such path.
It’s the female beetle that decides which tree to attack, Aukema said.
Panya Yang met the Paw family when all hope seemed lost.
As a St. Paul police officer, Yang has patrolled the East Side for three years. He met the Paw family while responding to reports of a person in crisis and learned their needs ran deep: the family patriarch had died in a car accident 10 years before, and a son had died in an accident shortly after graduating college. Narcotics had compounded another son’s mental health struggles, leaving the mother to care for him and her daughter.
“To her it feels like she doesn’t have anybody to turn to,” Yang said. “It feels like she needs something to look for, to feel like somebody cares.”
That’s why Yang and law enforcement officers from across the state volunteered Saturday to deliver presents to the Paw family and others in need, as part of the Minnesota Asian Peace Officers’ Association’s Glow of Hope event.
Glow of Hope, which launched in 2008, collects and distributes gifts for struggling families. Officers submit the names of families they encounter in their work for consideration before the organization chooses those whose needs are greatest.
Last year, the association delivered gifts to five families with help from the Karen Organization of Minnesota. This year the group chose three families, allowing them to focus on the quality rather than quantity of the gifts. Donations raised throughout the year fund the gifts they distribute.
St. Paul officer Keng Her, the association’s president, said many of the members come from immigrant families themselves, which motivates them to volunteer and help with donating gifts.
“Glow of Hope is to be a shining light for the families during the holidays,” Her said. “Whatever our parents were able to scrounge to give to us, we cherished it. So knowing our community and also the people that we serve, we wanted to do the same thing back to them.”
“It’s been a huge shift,” he said.
Deqa Muhidin, a former schoolteacher, children’s book author and Somali language heritage program coordinator at the Minneapolis Public Schools Multilingual Department, said the Sing-Again project would be a great addition to what was already in place.
The district’s Somali Heritage Language Program was launched in 2021 and has grown to 270 students in kindergarten through fourth grade.
The program is more than a language-learning program, she said, also teaching Somali culture.
The Somali language has its own cultural insights, which are only spoken by elders, and once they are no longer here, those insights will be lost, Muhidin said. For example, elders might use the phrase, “Look at something in your foot,” meaning run. Or a merchant may tell a customer, “I’m going to close my eyes,” meaning this is my final offer, she said.
An area shuttle service hopes to help ease Freeborn County’s health care woes by offering free rides to local hospitals.
SMART Transit, which operates in Austin, Albert Lea and Owatonna, is expanding its medical ride service for Freeborn County residents next year thanks to a $10,000 grant. The shuttle company will offer free rides to Mayo Clinic hospitals in Albert Lea and Austin for residents age 55 and up, addressing a problem for residents who’ve seen medical services in the region shrink over the years.
“We’re quite ecstatic,” said Chris Thompson, operations manager at SMART Transit. “I can’t even explain how wonderful news it is.”
Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea announced service cuts in 2017, urging people to travel to Austin, about 20 minutes east, for most inpatient hospital visits. Area residents organized to get Iowa-based MercyOne to open a primary care clinic in 2022, but pandemic-related complications and financial troubles led to the clinic closing at the beginning of 2024.
A group of Albert Lea residents approached SMART Transit officials earlier this year, asking for more medical shuttle service and expanded rides to hospitals. SMART has had a free ride program for seniors in Mower County for years thanks to Mayo Clinic grants, but there wasn’t funding to duplicate the program.
Mayo officials worked with SMART staff to secure grant money through the Naeve Health Care Foundation, a local group named after the former hospital that served Albert Lea residents since 1911. The foundation grants money for local health care issues including Mayo program funding; it has donated more than $4 million for community health care.
Freeborn County isn’t alone in struggling to access health care. For decades, hospitals in greater Minnesota have largely joined up with bigger systems or closed as the state’s population shifted to metropolitan areas. Some smaller hospitals have tried banding together to save money, while others find niches in the area to offer better services.
Yet a growing population of seniors means an ever-increasing need to get them to doctor’s appointments, and rural communities are struggling to meet transportation demands. Minnesota’s senior population (age 65 and older) grew from about 680,000 residents in 2010 to almost 950,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Not all of them have their own transportation.
