There will certainly be alot of Ash firewood for years to come over here in WNY!!! There are roughly 10.4 Million Ash trees in the 7 counties that make up the WNY region of the State. Been talking with alot of guys who own tree service business and they are literally running out of space to stock the wood for re-sale. One guy alone told me yesterday he has cut down about 300 Ash tree in the last 6 weeks! Lots of good firewood.
I love it when people say not to worry, or it doesn't kill them all, ect. I have access to maybe 100 of them in a 1/2 mile of stream valley (black ash) I don't look forward to them dying. Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) - NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation Won't be long. I see people with their RVs from the city, downstate and out of state bringing in firewood.
That is a number so high I can't imagine what it would look like. I would question what wood will stand where the Ash stood.
So far I have not noticed a lot more. I was just up at Yellowstone and the beetle kill is pretty bad up there also in certain areas. I went through Donner pass coming from Sacramento, California to Reno, Nevada about a month and a half ago and I did not notice any beetle kill in the trees there at all.
Well its good that you arent seeing much more advancement. We were expecting in our province of BC that the mountain pine beetle was going to decimate our forests. I can only speak of the areas that I travel back and forth, which is Vancouver to the south eastern part of the province, and it appears that the little bugger has run his course for now. I have to look hard to find more than a few fresh beetle infected pine trees close to home.
I've got a few thousand of them here - 95% of them still beautifully healthy. I've been keeping a very close eye on them the past few years. So far I haven't seen any signs. I'm not ready to declare victory but I'm far from admitting defeat. There won't be any preemptive logging here. I've heard that they now believe the chestnut blight might not have wiped out all the chestnut trees. But our ancestors cut them all down before they had a chance to find out.
I don't kown why or who does "PREEMPTIVE" logging. From all sources I've read whether it be Dutch elm disease or beech bark disease, research says leave them and we may find resistant strains of trees. There are acres and acres of elm that only got so big and are dead. I will never cut a living elm. EAB and a diseases are very different. You can develop a resistance to a cold or flue, but you can't develop a resistance to being stabbed.
It was suggested by the link you posted. I've been in a quarantine zone since at least 2013. I'm hoping the bugs decide to get picky about where they want to live - I've never seen a scorpion here; I don't think they like the climate. It's probably a fool's hope, but I'm not giving it up.
Preemptive logging is kinda like cutting your tits off because a grandparent had breast cancer. It didn't work for the chestnut or elm. It's wishful thinking on the part of the NY DEC if they think it will work for the ash. I'm starting to notice live ash in Michigan in areas with a high woodpecker population. Predation is probably the only real EAB solution so far.
It may have been Cornell, but the research paper talked about micro organisms for attacking beech bark disease. You would think mankind could give the EAB a diseases.
Word is they are having some luck with a gnat sized wasp for the EAB. Wonder what they do with the wasp when the green beetle is gone though?