A half-inch-long beetle that one state official calls a death sentence for ash trees in Ohio has spread to a second county.
The emerald ash borer, native to Asia, was found earlier this year in Whitehouse, in Lucas County, near Toledo. The state cut and incinerated thousands of ash trees in an attempt to contain the insect.
But now the Ohio Department of Agriculture is surveying trees around infested areas in Hicksville, a small town in Defiance County about two miles from Indiana.
Infestations were found there in early August in trees at a wholesale nursery and on the grounds of a company that makes wooden tool handles.
The state issued a quarantine, restricting the movement of ash trees, firewood, branches and logs from 12 affected properties in Hicksville after confirming the presence of the insect.
The emerald ash borer is a dark, metallic-green beetle that ravishes the ash trees it infects by inhibiting food throughout the tree.
“In essence, it’s a death sentence for ash trees,” and Ohio Agriculture Director Fred Dailey. “It has the same potential as the Dutch elm disease or the chestnut blight. It’s something we need to take very seriously and we need to stop it dead in its tracks if we can.”
The insect was discovered last year in the southeastern Michigan and in western Ontario. No one knows how the Asian beetle reached the Great Lakes, although scientists speculate it was in packing crates and wooden pallets aboard ships delivering goods from overseas.
Michigan has tried to contain it, but its quarantine area has grown to include 13 counties.
Six million trees are either dead or dying in the state, said Sara Linsmeier-Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Michigan’s Department of Agriculture.
Michigan has about 700 million ash trees. It established firewood checkpoints for this holiday weekend on several main highways in an attempt to keep the bug from spreading. Members of the state’s Emerald Ash Borer Task Force will check firewood to make sure there are no indications of infestations and also pass out information on the beetle.
“I don’t know that we’d get any argument that this is one of the biggest plant pest issues that any state has had to deal with,” Linsmeier-Wurfel said in a phone interview.
Michigan estimates that eradicating the pest will take 12 years and cost $350 million to $370 million.
The insect has the potential to dramatically alter Ohio’s forests, said Dailey, the agriculture director. A state forest survey estimated there are 3.8 billion ash trees in Ohio. They are found in every county.
Dailey said the department had “high hopes” or eradicating the pest when it was discovered in Lucas County in February. Workers cut, chipped and incinerated about 8,000 trees, most of which were saplings, from 23 properties within a quarter-mile of five infested properties.
Two full-time surveyors are now inspecting areas around the infested properties in Defiance County to see the extent of the infestation.
“If we cannot contain it, it’s going to have a very major impact on Ohio’s hardwood forest,” he said.
The department is pursuing a federal grant that would pay to hire more people to conduct additional surveys and do eradication work.
“We have the potential of stopping this insect in Ohio,” Dailey said. “If we fail to do that, it’s going to do irreparable damage to our forests.”
Steve Lamier, general manager of the Crook-Miller Co., which makes ash garden tool handles in Hicksville, said two trees on his property were found to be infested. So far, his lumbering operation has shown no signs of infestation.
With the wet summer, which put a crimp on logging, and the ash tree quarantine in several counties in Michigan, Lamier said, he has had to scramble to find logs elsewhere.
Crook-Miller is under state order to grind up wood left over from the milling into 1-inch pieces. Nearly 80 percent of the company’s business uses white ash. The company handles about 4 million board-feet of ash timber each year.
“It is a big concern,” Lamier said in a phone interview. “You definitely want to do the best job you can to contain this problem. Whether or not they can, I don’t know.”
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer