Charles Smith, left, and Dwight French cut down trees infested with the Asian longhorned beetle along Quinapoxet Lane in Worcester this month. It is feared that the beetle could wipe out large swaths of New England’s trees.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

WORCESTER, Mass. — On a bright spring morning, men in hard hats rip through the trees in Ray Fitzgerald’s neighborhood. A man in a crane swings a maple limb over a housetop and dumps it onto a front lawn, where two men shove it into a screaming chipper.

In minutes, the 35-year-old tree is gone.

“They started taking them out yesterday afternoon,” says Fitzgerald, standing next to a crane in his driveway. “So far, I’ve lost about 30 trees –– maples, ash, oak and a couple of birches.”

On streets like Fitzgerald’s, authorities are waging a costly war against the Asian longhorned beetle, a wood-devouring insect capable of boring through a hardwood tree in months.

Since August, they have destroyed 20,000 trees in a 64-acre zone that includes Worcester and parts of Holden, Shrewsbury, Boylston and West Boylston.

Now, authorities fear the pest may spread to other New England states. Although the beetles move slowly on their own, they can hitchhike to other sites in wood carried by campers and tree companies.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined two Rhode Island companies $1,875 each for transporting 11 ash trees from the quarantined area to North Kingstown. The wood was returned to Worcester and destroyed.

In the State House, Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, has introduced a bill that would make it a crime to carry beetle-infested wood into the state. Violators could pay fines of up to $25,000.

Much is at stake, says Clint McFarland, federal director of the beetle eradication program in Worcester.

The infested area sits at the southern edge of a forest extending from upstate New York to Maine, and well into Canada.

A massive infestation could cost billions to the lumber, tourism and maple syrup industries, he says. A third of the region’s trees could die.

“The preferred host trees of these insects are maples, elms, willows, birches –– the trees that make up the majority of New England’s forests,” says McFarland, who has been tracking the beetle in the Northeast.

“It’s an immediate threat,” says Mike Bohne, who works for the U.S. Forest Service, in Durham, N.H. “I would say the risk is relatively high that the beetles have escaped Worcester. The question is, where are they now?”

RHODE ISLAND OFFICIALS are taking no chances.

Department of Environmental Management officials say they will scour records kept by local campgrounds to see if Worcester –area visitors have carried firewood to local parks.

“We will visit campgrounds and look at ZIP codes to see if people are coming from Worcester –– and carrying firewood,” says Elizabeth Lopes-Duguay, with the DEM’s cooperative agricultural pest survey.

“We hope it’s not here. And if it is, we hope we can find it sooner than later.”

Other agencies are doing the same. “We’re finding a staggering number of Worcester campers in New England’s parks,” says Bohne.

Donna Massie reported the first outbreak in New England last August. The insects bored hundreds of dime-sized holes into a tree in her backyard in Worcester. Later, beetles covered home plate on a baseball diamond in nearby Kendrick Field

“One tree had 750 holes,” says McFarland. “That means there were 750 beetles in one tree.”

Adult females can lay up to 90 eggs on a tree in the summer. They chew oval-shaped depressions into the bark and lay their eggs in the hole. Over the winter the larvae and pupae “chew their way deep inside the tree” and then exit as adults, says USDA spokeswoman Suzanne Bond. They leave a trail of tunnels. The damage halts the flow of nutrients, and the trees die in a few years.

The beetles have no predator in North America, and insecticides are useless against insects deep inside the tree.

“Infested trees must be cut and chipped, to destroy the beetle and larvae,” says Bond.

In Worcester, contractors chip many of the trees on site. Stumps are ground nine inches deep and the exposed roots are destroyed.

Larger trees are chewed up in a fenced area next to a plant that makes sandpaper. The chips are sent to plants which burn the pulp to make electricity.

The beetle, which probably arrived in wood pallets shipped from China, first appeared in the United States in 1996 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Since then they have surfaced in Chicago, New York’s Central Park and parts of New Jersey. Authorities aren’t sure if the infestations are related.

Eradication efforts in New York, New Jersey and Illinois have cost $268 million over the past 12 years. Nearly 40,000 trees have been lost, but, the threat is now mostly contained.

The Massachusetts effort could take 10 years, says McFarland. Three survey teams are checking for damage in the area. “They’re finding 20 trees a week,” he says. “The number will grow.”

AUTHORITIES will soon step up their efforts.

In August, state and federal agencies will launch a public-awareness program and hand out posters, guides and other items. They want residents and business owners to look for beetle damage in their backyards, streets, nurseries, parking lots, fields and maple sugar tree groves.

And this fall, 45 smokejumpers –– firefighters who parachute into wildfire areas –– will determine if the quarantined area is growing. They’ll be joined by 45 other workers.

For homeowners in Worcester, it’s been a tough year. In December, an ice storm cracked limbs and trees in the once-verdant city. Now, contractors are removing some of surviving trees, leaving barren swatches.

“It’s hard to lose your trees,” says McFarland. “Even if you understand the reason for it, once the crews start cutting, it’s never easy.”

Federal, state and city programs will help pay for new trees. But they’ll be younger and fewer.

Ray Fitzgerald is OK with the effort.

Yes, he says, it’s tough to lose the trees that once lined the street where he’s lived for 15 years. But it’s better than the alternative –– losing a densely wooded park behind his house.

“I’d rather lose 30 trees than see them clear-cut 54 acres.” How do you know if a tree or area is infested?

Officials say look for the following:

•Female beetles chew small oval pits, about a half-inch in diameter, to lay their eggs beneath the bark. After the eggs hatch, the larvae bore into and feed off the living trees over the winter.

•Adult beetles leave smooth, round dime-sized holes when they exit a tree. They also leave sawdust-like material on the ground around the trunk or on tree limbs and oozing sap. Try fitting the eraser end of a pencil into the exit hole. If it does not go in straight at least one inch deep, it is not a beetle.

•Adult beetles are about an inch long. Throughout the summer, they emerge and feed on leaves and twigs.

•The shiny black insects have irregular white spots and long antennae. The beetles can be found anywhere, including park benches, car hoods, patio furniture, sides of houses and sidewalks. They are active from early summer through mid-fall and do not attack oaks or conifers such as pine or spruce trees.More online

To report suspicious tree damage, see photographs or read about the pests, visit http://massnrc.org/pests/alb, or call the toll-free Asian longhorned beetle hotline at (866) 702-9938.

For more information about the eradication program, visit www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/alb/alb.shtml.

To report the pest to the Rhode Island Department of Agriculture, visit www.dem.ri.gov/

programs/bnatres/agricult/caps.htm#report.

pdavis@projo.com