EAB, Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis)

Just received this in my e-mail-

A planted a few white ash trees last year in my woods to try to get more diversity from oaks and maples. Ash trees are very rare around here so hopefully the bugs won't be able to find them. I'm about 95% sure there are no ash trees within 20 miles of mine.

Doubt that's far enough dear. You know my thoughts on EAB. I truly don't believe there is any way to contain it.

Well, when I planted them I knew of the possibilities. If they eventually succumb to EAB it will be no big deal. I will still have plenty of others.

Unfortunately, I have quite a few mature and healthy Ash here. I've been planting replacement trees right up in tight next to them. If they're gonna go... and I feel in my bones they're all going to go to plant heaven like the American Elm and the American Chestnut, might as well have a replacement species planted to carry on. I don't particularly care for "bald spots" in my yard.

So so sorry the EAB has reached your neighborhood. We have been dealing with it here for sometime. The state is using some areas in suburban Toledo, Ohio as living laboratories in using chemicals to determine what , if any, might be effective AND manageable by a homeowner. Imidacloprid is showing the most promise. The village where I am chairman of the tree commission has been soil drenching the roots of some ashes we want to try to save. We did this against the direction of the state. They wanted all 464 ash trees removed at village expense. We choose not to. The commission felt that the state would not be succesful in stopping the borer advance with their cutting strategy and indeed, they abandoned this strategy this year. This will be the third year we have applied the chemical. The trees were not infected when we began. They remain healthy so far. We are surrounded by active borer activity in all directions. Perhaps Illinois will be better managed.

EAB was about 50 miles from me in southern Cook County last year but it was undocumented in that the EAB wasn't sent to a lab for identification. Hi Snapple, I truly don't believe it has anything to do with how well a State is managed or not. If it is in Kane Co and Cook Co, it is in Lake Co and McHenry Co as well as a few others already and is a hop skip and a jump away from Wisconsin. There were some threads on this over in Trees.

I have at least 100 Ash trees here on my property. I have no intentions of taking them down if they become infected at this time. I'll let them go down on their own to create biomass and they can hang out as a skeleton for a while (birds love snag trees) before they go down like a few of the Elms I have here that I treated for DED that finally succumbed even after they were treated at a cost of around $1500 per tree. Yes, I realize the cost of treating Ash is considerably less but I don't see being able to keep up treating all the trees as a prophylactic year after year. Additionally, I'm in an upper watershed management area and can you imagine the effects on our water supply if every homeowner around here started treating their Ash? The long term ramifications of all these chemicals can't be good.

I agree with you Equil. However we are looking at an estimnated canopy loss here of 30% to 40% in many areas. Not all homeowners will be inclined to treat. Be careful about which trees you plan letting go without cutting. Dead wood on ash becomes exceptionally brittle and hazardous within a year or two. Any dead ash should become strictly a hard hat area. They should never be left to overhang, buildings, streets or any public area.

I'm on 5 acres. Most of the people here are on lots that are at least 2 acres. I'm really going to let mine stand and drop when their root systems fail but I wouldn't even think of doing that if I was on a smaller lot or if my tree was in range of a neighbor's home. The three Ash that are in "striking" distance of our house will be removed so I shouldn't have said I'd leave every last one standing. Actually, one was removed a few weeks ago in an attempt to get it out of the way for a Martin House. I was going to select a different area and had my eye on sacrificing a different tree but figured might as well let that Green Ash go as in my mind it is going sooner or later. It was towering and I'm not going to mess with that being 30' from my house.

"Not all homeowners will be inclined to treat", around here I can guarantee the vast majority will not treat. Best guess is that less than 5% will treat and of those 5%... many won't keep up season after season. And then we still have all the good folk hauling firewood in and out of state. I'd say it's over and anything we do is merely buying time to establish other native species. I'm not normally a defeatist but I think given all we know and based on the lack of success containing EAB that ignoring existing containment failures is not in our best interests for the long haul. There are no viable biological controls for this that I am aware of. EAB is going to take an unprecedented toll on all Ash from sea to shining sea and I believe Chestnut Blight will pale by comparison in my humble opinion. Treatment is staving off the inevitable and I'd classify it as a waste of my limited financial resources right about now based on my somewhat limited knowledge. I'm going to continue going the route of using my money to plant replacement trees and I started doing so two years ago because I was monitoring what was happening in other States. Here's hoping something is discovered that effectively eradicates EAB.

I think we're going to be staring down a 30% canopy loss in this area also which is going ot give some opportunistic species an even greater foothold. Our Village had an informal chit chat with me and evidently they've decided to change gears and not treat. It sort of sounded to me as if those capable of providing treatment (at a cost of course) were circling and fear mongering flyers were being distributed of what would happen if one chose not to treat. It would appear my Village is going to "companion" plant as I am doing. This Village is "liability" conscious so any infected Ash near playgrounds and parks would most assuredly be removed although I do not know what they will do with Ash that are infected and not posing a threat of damage on the way down. Hard hat area- sheesh, some of these are so big we'd be talking Sherman Tank area.

I understand the defeatist view well, but is there really no way to kill this beetle? Ebola can be controlled if it threatens mankind, is there no way to quell an insect infestation? A small area of my hometown is insect controlled. They spray something each week and those areas have no bugs, at least the ones that bite you. I feel that any time you lose a species to an invasive predator the whole world suffers. At the very least I hope that the afflicted trees get the same attention that our most horrible diseases get. We thought that smallpox was gone, but it was saved in a labratory somewhere. I hate to think that people will succumb to the inevitable if it is possible to preserve a species. There is a point where politics dictates what can be saved, and I hope that human nature can prevail and we can save a species from extincion before it is too late. Take some trees to a controlled lab somewhere in the world until the offender is controlled. The violator should be saved as well, but with invasives, it is a grey area.

(sigh) Ash are now being saved in "laboratories". It started last year I believe.

The beetle could probably be killed however the pesticides that would have to be used would have consequences far worse than the loss of all Ash.

I am pleased to know that Ash trees are being saved. Is it not nature's law that every force has an opponent? I hate to see invasive fauna/flora but they almost always have a vice that keeps them in check. The green man has a system that keeps things in balance. When one half invades, perhaps it is time to bring the other half about. Our planet evolved very well, all things in balance. There *is* a way to quell this bug, however we might have to shuffle the flora to do it. There has to be a way to keep the Ash around. 60% of the trees in Springfield are Ash. We have many miles of fields to slow the progress, but I believe that life always finds a way.