The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has awarded a Cornell University entomologist a $50,000 grant to help eradicate the Asian long-horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis).

The beetle, which is wreaking havoc with hardwood trees in Brooklyn and on parts of Long Island, is considered by experts to threaten commercial tree industries in the Northeast. It is also a threat to the maple syrup, and tourism industries. The beetle has no known natural enemy in North America.

E. Richard Hoebeke, assistant curator for the Cornell Entomology Collection, will receive the grant to research and help produce a comprehensive, illustrated handbook for the identification of the beetles' genus group. The handbook, to be written in collaboration with ARS entomologist Steven W. Lingafelter, will be used by authorities to help stop infestation of the beetle at U.S. borders.

"Usually we have difficulty producing handbooks or materials to help identify pests without the proper monetary resources," said Hoebeke. "But because of the significance of this beetle, we now have the resources to make an effective handbook."

This USDA-ARS grant money was funded in the latest agriculture appropriations bill in Congress. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) proposed the appropriation in consultation with New York Sens. Alfonse D'Amato and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and New York Reps. James Walsh and JosŽ Serrano, who serve on the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee. Entomologist believe the Congressional funding effort also may prove to be crucial in saving hardwoods in New England from the beetle.

Hoebeke and Lingafelter, of the USDA's Systemic Entomology Laboratory in Washington, D.C., will travel to China this summer to obtain samples of the hardwood pest and related species in the genus Anoplophora for further research.

Information on the beetle genus is limited. Most of the modern information available on anoplophora was written in the 1940s and 1950s, and most of it is written in Chinese. The beetle is native to Japan, Korea and the eastern provinces of China, said Hoebeke, and before 1996 was never seen outside of Asia.

In August 1996, residents of Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood believed teen vandals were drilling holes in hundreds of maple trees. But a resident found a strange, black and white bug on the trees and passed it along to New York City's parks and recreation department. Samples of the beetles were sent to Carolyn Klass, a Cornell Cooperative Extension entomologist in Ithaca. Klass had never seen the species before and showed it to her colleague, Hoebeke. "I gasped when I saw it," he said. "I knew this wasn't a species native to North America."

By mid-September 1996, scientists at the USDA entomology laboratory in Washington, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and the Bishop Museum in Honolulu had confirmed Hoebeke's worse fears. They found that hundreds of Asian long-horned beetles were dining on New York City's hardwood trees.

Jealously guarded U.S. border entrances normally can keep such pests at bay. But Hoebeke believes the Asian long-horned beetle slipped through in a wooden crate and was transported to Brooklyn and Long Island.

To combat the problem, New York officials cut down every infested tree. Currently, state- and federal-imposed quarantines exist in Brooklyn and Long Island, which means that cut wood and firewood cannot be taken out of those areas.

To date, nearly 3,000 hardwood trees (mostly maples) have been cut down and replaced by tree varieties not susceptible to attack by the beetle