An EAB article from Worcester, MA Worcester more prepared than most to fight latest tree pest Meanwhile, VT is mulling a ban on "untreated" firewood Proposed Rule Would Ban Out-Of-State Firewood In Vermont While on the page above, I saw this link about the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. We went through the Delaware Water Gap recently and saw the dead and dying Hemlocks there. Ecologists Look To A Tiny Fly To Save Hemlocks
All I can say is: "Good luck with that." I have only six acres for me, as a land owner, to try to treat all the ash trees on my property would be, shall we say, financially embarrassing. For the 105 acre farm next to me even more so. With luck they may get a couple of years but the bug wins in the end, just look around if you don't believe me. Like the Borg said: "Resistance is futile, you will be asimulated!"
Yes, treating on any scale gets silly pretty quickly. I've got a truckload or two of Ash that could be marketed now, but would be better with another 10-15 years of growth. I fret about it, but we still don't have any EAB nearby.
Back when we got it here they put restrictions on moving it that was totally stupid, some of the boundary lines within a county were so jagged and convulated. It was like they believed the bug was not going to go over the center line of the road. Gary
They recently gave up trying to stop movement of EAB within the state here so now the only restriction is interstate. It had gotten pretty silly with each and every county infested and not able to move wood to the next county.
The Allegheny National Forest in Pa had a $5000 fine for moving firewood in. Although I just did a search and cant find it. They may have changed it since the EAB is everywhere around forest now
Honestly, I didn't fret over the loss of all the ash trees. They'll provide me with easy firewood for 4-5 years and will clear out my forest for what I'll call "more desirable" trees, which is anything that has other uses beside firewood. I'd much prefer to have a forest full of nut trees and sugar maples (my brother collects the syrup) so while I drop my ash trees, I'm also dropping a lot of red and silver maple trees to give room to my hickories, oaks, beech, and sugar maples. I'm also on a vendetta to clear my place of honey suckle!!
Be careful that you don't end up with a monoculture BJ. I was so happy that my plantation had a good diverse planting when EAB came along because it left behind a diverse enough group of trees to survive whatever comes along next.
That's my problem now. At least a full 50% of my forest is/was ash, and 100% of the trees over 20" were ash. The rest is a pretty much even split of Shagbark hikory, red oak, cherry, red maple, and a handful of beech and sugar maple.
It sounds like your remaining trees are diverse enough for at least one more round of species specific pests.
Best way to get rid of EAB is to let it run its course. When all the hosts are dead, the EAB critter will die off also. But then we've got the young ash trees just getting root. Remember Chinese Elm disease???
When it first hit here (2002) they were going wild cutting trees in cities and then in counties. All for naught as the bug spreads like wildfire. Almost all of our ash were killed. Fortunately we found a few more live ash trees on our place this year but we have only 4 or 5. Hundreds have been cut and still many more to cut.
The local logging trucks still haul at least two loads a day from Mich through Wisc and into Minn. Never heard of anyone stopping them and checking their loads.......
The only hope for Ash trees is that eventually enough diseases, parasites, and predators of EAB build up that the EAB is controlled. It seems hopeless now, but remember the Gypsy Moth? In the 80s it looked like the Gypsy Moth would deforest PA and all of the east, but by now Gypsy Moth is still a pest, but it doesn't kill as many trees as it used to. Many introduced pests start out seemingly unstoppable, then decline over time. On the other hand, a few like the Chestnut Blight are do deadly to certain trees ( with the Chestnut Blight fungus the victim is American Chestnut) that the trees are essentially wiped out forever. I hope Ash trees aren't gone forever from our forests.
