EAB keeps Davey Tree, arborists busy

The Davey Tree Expert Company is familiar with trees and their maladies, but few of the company’s employees have ever faced issues with the emerald ash borer, or EAB as it’s known to foresters, park managers and landscapers.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation event,” said Jim Zwack, general manager of the Davey Institute, to Crain’s Cleveland Business news. “This is on the same scale as Dutch elm disease – and, at the end, it’s going to be much bigger in scope.”

The emerald ash borer is a beetle thought to have come to the United States from Asia in the 1990s. It was discovered in 2002 in Detroit, and it has quickly spread to surrounding states.

In Asia, the ash trees grew with the bug and have developed defenses against it. Yet the ash trees common in the U.S. have no such defenses, and the beetles are killing them by the hundreds of millions, Zwack told Crain’s Cleveland Business news. Many at Davey Tree are busy performing ash tree removal jobs this fall because of the EAB problem.

Davey Tree discussed its approach to combating this problem with Crain’s Cleveland Business. Read the full story at their website here.