BETHEL, Ohio — Bethel and Tate Township residents can pick up free trees during a two-day giveaway next month at the address of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Asian Longhorned Beetle Eradication Program office, the Village of Bethel announced in a Facebook post.
The event, billed as “The People’s Nursery Tree Giveaway,” runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 25 and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 26 at 3079 Angel Dr., according to the village. It is open to all Bethel and Tate Township residents.
The giveaway follows several years of tree distributions in the area tied to the federal government’s effort to eradicate the Asian longhorned beetle, an invasive wood-boring insect first detected in Tate Township in 2011. More than 118,000 infested trees have been removed from Clermont County since then to stop the pest’s spread, according to state and federal agriculture officials.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Ohio Department of Agriculture began growing tree species the beetle does not target to distribute to residents who lost trees to the infestation, with funding from the U.S. Forest Service and a grant from the nonprofit Taking Root. Past giveaways in the program have included eastern redbud, Kentucky coffeetree, northern catalpa, swamp white oak and tulip tree saplings.
Earlier this month, the Ohio Department of Agriculture released about 4,000 acres — roughly 6.2 square miles — of southeastern Tate Township from the beetle quarantine, citing progress in the eradication effort. Roughly 37.8 square miles of Clermont County remain under quarantine, including parts of Tate Township, East Fork State Park and East Fork Wildlife Area.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Village of Bethel.