Lauren's Forest City Tree Blog

Unprotected ash trees are susceptible to fatal attacks by the Emerald Ash Borer insect, “the cause of a looming environmental and cultural disaster in the northeastern quarter of the North American continent.” Forest City Tree Protection offers annual Insect Control Soil Injection applications which can protect ash trees from this devastating pest. Call or email us to for a no-obligation quote on protecting your ash tree(s). 216-381-1700 or llanphear@forestcitytree.com

The following article, “Beetle Decimating Environment in North America” appeared February 28, 20011 and comes from the Indian Country Today Media Network.

By Debra Utacia Krol

The emerald ash borer is surprisingly beautiful, as beetles go. It has a pleasingly streamlined bullet-shape, a bright, metallic emerald green shell, and a bright red, metallic dorsal surface. But you may be seeing it soon on “wanted” posters, because this tiny insect is the cause of a looming environmental and cultural disaster in the northeastern quarter of the North American continent.

The emerald ash borer, which is just one-half-inch long, is busily wiping out more than a billion ash trees in the United States and Canada, wreaking ecological havoc on watersheds and forests, as well as the economies of more than 10 states and provinces, and doing incalculable damage to Northern Woodlands tribal cultures. Kelly Church, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and a nationally acclaimed basket weaver, is one of the leaders of the battle against the emerald ash borer. She’s determined to preserve Northeastern tribes’ cultural traditions against this onslaught, even if it takes generations.

Known as EAB, the beetle was accidentally imported from Eastern Asia in the late 1990s, possibly in cargo pallets. Since then, the minuscule insect has made itself at home in the U.S.’s vulnerable ash trees. (Asian ash trees are resistant to the borer’s effects.) EAB females bore into an ash’s bark and lay eggs. The resultant larvae bore further into the tree and into the cambium, the area between the bark and wood where nutrient levels are high. The larvae kill the trees by destroying the water- and nutrient-conducting tissues under the bark. Once an infestation is noticed—an obvious sign is the thinning of a tree’s canopy—it’s already too late: The tree is doomed. So far, researchers are unable to halt the infestation, and mortality is virtually 100 percent. EAB has killed tens of millions of trees in Michigan alone.