about science and nature under the moniker Kaydubs the Hiking Scientist. Her Instagram account has amassed over 28,000 followers, and she’s currently working on a guidebook for the Appalachian Trail. Wickert stopped by during a fieldwork trip to Canaan Valley. We engaged in a classic Appalachian porch chat about her quest to help people care about nature and understand their role in protecting it. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get into natural history?
KRISTEN WICKERT By Nikki Forrester West Virginia is home to one of the most biodiverse and resilient ecosystems on the planet. Our Appalachian habitat also cultivates an array of astonishingly talented natural historians. From an eight-year-old who can identify a catfish from its skeleton to an 80-year-old who can name every plant species on a hike, an understanding and appreciation of the wild thrives across cultures and age groups in the Mountain State. Kristen Wickert works tirelessly to keep this love and knowledge of the natural world alive. She earned her masters and PhD degrees at West Virginia University (WVU) studying invasive species, including the hemlock woolly adelgid and the malodorous tree-of-heaven. Now, as an employee of the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, she’s tackling issues with the destructive spotted lanternfly. Alongside her full-time job, she creates educational social media posts and videos 44 HIGHLAND OUTDOORS
SUMMER 2021
I have a lot of fond memories of being a little kid and being entertained by plants. My favorite book when I was little was The Secret Garden. I used to keep a tally of how many times I read it on the front cover. I was also super enamored with My Side of the Mountain. It gave me an understanding of plants and their uses and engrained that idea of being connected to the wilderness. My stepdad had Audubon books that I used to carry in a backpack. I would go out behind the house and try to identify things with his books. Once you learn something outside, it’s hard to not see it anymore on hikes. It still happens to me; when someone teaches me a new insect, mushroom or plant, I begin to see it everywhere.
What brought you to West Virginia? I’m a native of eastern Pennsylvania. I got a bachelor’s degree in forest science at Penn State and then I went to Texas for a year and worked as a forester. A year later, I was offered a position at WVU as a master’s student to work on hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae). I worked all over the place in West Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania but I really fell in love with the forests of West Virginia. So I stayed at WVU with the same advisor for my PhD, which focused on Verticillium wilt of tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and today I am happy to be a forever resident of West Virginia.
What was the focus of your PhD research? Verticillium, which is a native fungus that was found infecting the invasive tree-of-heaven in Pennsylvania in 2002. This fungus could potentially act as a biological control for the invasive tree species, but researchers wanted to see if it could kill co-occurring native tree species such as oak, cherry, and pine. They even wanted to see if the fungus would jump to non-native ornamental species like blue spruce, which is common in people’s yards, to be sure it didn’t negatively impact the horticultural landscape industry. I did a lot of tests to see how broad the host range was for the fungus as well as work on its pathogenicity and genetics. The work from my PhD ended up contributing, along with 20 years of other research, to it being funded for a registered bio control this year by the federal government. The funding will be used to conduct some final tests and formulate the fungus so scientists can use it in the field to help control the spread of the invasive tree-of-heaven.
Which invasive species do you work on now? I’m the spotted lanternfly coordinator and the plant pathologist with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. Spotted lanternfly is an invasive insect from Asia. It was introduced accidentally in landscaping supplies close to Philadelphia in 2014. Since then, it has spread throughout Pennsylvania, and to West Virginia, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia with single hitchhiker occurrences in other states like Maine, New Hampshire and even California. The first spotted lanternfly in West Virginia was found in 2019. Our populations are in the eastern panhandle, where there’s a lot of traffic along Route 81. The spotted lanternfly jumps onto vehicles, where it can hang on at very high speeds, and then just get off and lay eggs in a new location.
How does the spotted lanternfly impact plants in West Virginia? It causes a lot of problems that probably aren’t fully understood at this
Jessica McDonald
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