Thursday, 8:15 AM. 63 degrees, wind W, calm. The channel is glassy and fog obscures the Island. The sky is mostly clear, and the barometer predicts partly cloudy skies. It will get pretty warm again today. We are going to Stevens Point today (about 5hr. south) for a meeting of the Wisconsin urban Forestry Council, of which I am a member. Lucky will stay two nights at Blue Ribbon Kennels in Ashland, as we will be back too late tomorrow to pick him up then.
The UFC meeting’s most important topic will be the Emerald Ash Borer, which has devastated ash trees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and now has entered southern Wisconsin. It is a massive problem both for city trees and native populations of ash (genus Fraxinus) trees, reminiscent of the Dutch elm disease problem of a generation ago, and the Chestnut blight of a hundred years ago. This pest is also of Asiatic origin, arriving on our shores in shipping pallet wood. We never learn, it seems. Terrorists are not the only vermin needing to be interdicted at the border.
The pest is a small green beetle, the larvae of which is a flat-headed borer that girdles the cambium layer of the tree, just under the bark, and kills it. The destruction will cost billions (that’s with a B) of dollars, and great ecological damage to native forests as well. At this point the only way to stop the beetle is with impractical and very expensive applications of pesticide to individual trees. There is some hope of introducing, also from Asia, a tiny parasitic wasp that can kill the beetles, but this is still in the exploratory stage. One thing we can all do is to not transport any ash wood (firewood, living trees, etc.) from one location to another, to quarantine the insect.
Keep your eye on this problem, it is huge. For more info google Emerald Ash Borer, there is a lot out there.
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