Davey Tree Flipbooks

15 March/April 2020 | THE DAVEY BULLETIN HIGHWAY ENGINEERS HEAR FROM DAVEY Advisors working with departments of transportation can find it difficult to keep track of ever-changing federal environmental regulations. For the consultants in Davey Resource Group like Greg Snowden, senior biologist, those regulations can deeply affect the environmental sites they see on a daily basis. Snowden spoke at the 2019 Ohio Transportation Engineering Conference about the most recent changes, including legislative rollbacks of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act that could affect wetland and stream restoration projects. VISION ALB ERADICATED IN NEW YORK CITY The five boroughs of New York City have been declared free of Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) infestation following a 23-year campaign to eradicate the pest by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Davey Resource Group (DRG) employees conducted the final ground and climbing surveys in 2019 as part of efforts by the U.S.D.A. to confirm quarantine and removal protocols were effective. Kateri Savory, project manager, said DRG employees have been working on this most recent ALB contract in Brooklyn since 2016 and Queens since 2013. "During the time that we conducted surveys we did not find ALB infestation or even one tree with ALB damage," Savory said. Employee numbers fluctuated during the contract, but an average 20 employees actively worked to visually inspect trees in the city for ALB. Savory also manages the ALB contract with the USDA in Long Island, where there are small, active infestations. But the Big Apple is ALB-free, so the transportation of wood material is no longer regulated there. Top left: A Davey employee climbs a tree as part of ALB survey and inspection services. Left: Davey employees conduct an ALB survey in New York City. Survey data was shared with the client via direct integration of software systems. "One of the big elements that helped on this contract was that the DRG software development team created a more streamlined and automated delivery system for our data to better communicate it to the USDA," Savory said. "The client truly appreciated that." Justin Stratton, production manager, DRG software development team, said the use of Rover and myRowKeeper software for such survey work have allowed for efficient field data capture and ease of data processing and delivery to the client. "After we started the project, the USDA developed their own master database system to track survey information and requested that DRG build a bridge between our system and theirs," Stratton said. "The DRG software development team built an automated mechanism that posted each day's survey data to a mutually accessible location that the USDA could read and integrate into their system. Suspicious or positive trees can now be identified and investigated very quickly, thanks to this automation." Greg Snowden, DRG, senior biologist speaks at the 2019 OTEC Conference.

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