First West Point Story of the Day

From The New York Times:

The cartoon-purple boxes are hard to miss. The foresters who hang them from roadside trees all over the country call them Barney traps, for the friendly dinosaur whose color they resemble, but their purpose is anything but gentle.

The three-sided contraptions, baited with a chemical lure and coated with glue, are designed to catch the attention of the emerald ash borer — a deceptively pretty little beetle from Asia that has killed tens of millions of ash trees in less than a decade...

Finding even one beetle in a trap will set off federal and state quarantines, as happened this summer when an emerald ash borer was found at the United States Military Academy here, 60 miles north of New York City. Knowing that West Point’s 16,000 acres were in the path of the ash borer onslaught, Robert G. MacKenzie, a forester who works for the military academy, had volunteered in May to put up Barney traps...

West Point conservators have decided to cut down about 78 ash trees that are so close to buildings that they would cause serious damage if they become infested and fall (sic). The countless ash trees in West Point’s woods will be monitored, but not cut down.