Chinese Beetle Decimating Ash Trees

[hatrack]

TOLEDO, Ohio - "A Chinese beetle that crept into Ohio after killing millions of ash trees in Michigan is eating away at the tree industry in states much farther away.

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Scientists believe the emerald ash borer arrived in the United States from its native China with wood used to pack cargo. The beetle has infested or destroyed about 6 million ash trees in southeast Michigan, mostly near Detroit, and has been found in northwest Ohio and Maryland.

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For that to happen, researchers must find a way to stop the beetle from spreading. So far, there's no insecticide that can do it, and the beetle doesn't have any known natural predators. "Right now the only control is chopping down the trees," said Bill Stalter, executive director of the Ohio Nursery and Landscape Association. Its survey of 100 tree growers in Ohio found that the combined value of their ash trees was $20.2 million.

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Michigan has banned the sale of ash trees in the lower peninsula through next August in hopes of gaining control of the pest. In southeastern Michigan, where the ash borer was first detected last year, tree growers have lost at least $9 million in sales. That doesn't include losses by retail garden centers and landscapers."

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Yahoo News

[mistertrickster]

1. Hmmm . . . I had two green ash trees killed by boring insects in

Kansas. I don't think it the Emerald Ash beetle--these borers have been around for awhile.

[mike_c]

2. this is one of the hidden downsides of global "free" trade agreements....

Forest entomologists in particular consider this a ticking time bomb-- trade agreements in which free commerce take precedence over environmental protections make it very difficult to enforce bans on the importation of wood products-- even packing materials-- that might harbor invasive pest species. This was the keynote address topic at the North American Forest Insect Work Conference a few years ago (2000, IIRC).

[hatrack]

6. Chestnut blight, Dutch Elm disease, fire ants, Formosan termites . . .

zebra mussels, sericea lespedeza, Russian thistle (a.k.a. tumbleweed), tiger mosquitoes, purple loosestrife, varroa mites, cheatgrass, the longhorn beetle and so on.

Parts of the equation that seems to never get mentioned at WTO confabs.

[donsu]

3. back in the early '40s Chinese Beetles were a plague around D.C.

they would be in clusters on most plants. each day us kids would scoop them into glass mason jars with a little gasoline in the bottom. we did this to protect my parent's rose bushes and stuff in the veg. garden. After a number of yrs. they seemed to disappear.

[Kolesar]

4. Don't you mean "Japanese Beetles"?

Those green metallic beetles?

[donsu]

5. Your right! It was Japanese Beetles. Sorry, forget I ever said anything

nt

[yellowcanine]

9. Chinese, Japanese, you know how all those Asian beetles look alike

to us white humans.

[NNadir]

7. This sort of thing isn't new. The near extinction of the American Chestnut

took place under similar circumstances in the early part of the 20th century. Chestnut blight was imported with Asian Chestnut trees, a blight to which the magnificient American Chestnut, the premier tree of the Eastern forest was nearly eliminated. (Only shoots survive today of this "Eastern Redwood - The American Chestnut foundation is trying to breed suitable hybrids to restore the tree or at least a part of its genome.)

The vast worldwide threat of species invasions is covered in "A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines" by Yvonne Baskin, copyright 2002 by SCOPE. (Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment.)



(Note: I had promised myself to never again write on DU, but I do drop by to read this section and this issue, one passion, caused me to violate my self-prescription.)

[hatrack]

8. Harpers had a really interesting article about five years back

It was the cover story entitled "Planet Of Weeds" - a sort of prediction of post-human evolutionary biology.

The basic premise was (and I generally agree) that the weedy - generalized and adaptable - shall inherit the earth.

[NNadir]

12. I'm afraid I have to agree.

This is not just aesthetically disturbing.

I also question whether a contraction in diversity expressed not only in the number of species but on the molecular level of genes might not have some profound effect on life's survival, particularly in periods of dramatic climate (or other environmental) changes.

[gate of the sun]

10. beetles are wrecking havoc all over the place

you should see Santa Fe.......very sad so many dead trees soon we will look alot like the martian landscape. They said it was caused by drought....I wonder though we saw trees dying near lake tahoe this summer and they weren't having a drought.

[NickB79]

11. I fear for all my trees

I've planted literally thousands of them since I was a kid on the farm, and have grown most of those myself from seed. I swear that soon there won't be ANYTHING left that I can plant. I'm growing American chestnut seedlings from two trees in the Twin Cities but who knows how long they'll live before blight hits. I've been cutting down American elms for years around the farm as Dutch Elm kills them. There is a fungal disease in oak trees that one has to watch for. I've been fighting a battle with imported European buckthorn, Japanese honeysuckle and garlic mustard on 30 acres of land for the past 7 years with limited success. And because of the booming deer populations I even have to fight with native species who have overpopulated their habitats and eat every unprotected seedling on the forest floor. The main species that have taken over are ash, oak and basswood, and now one of the few remaining species is in danger.

Maybe I'll just take up vegetable gardening. Fighting potato bugs seems like a less stressful battle.

[blindpig]

13. trophic cascade

5 years of drought + pine beetles + a severe ice storm in 12/03 and my property looks like a war zone. The night of the storm we lay in bed listening to what sounded like an artillery barrage as pines fell like ninepins, often taking a red cedar with them. The crowns of hardwood also often broke, possibly weakened by the prolonged drought. If we don't get a few more yrs of good rain we're gonna have a serious fire hazard. Maybe I'll take up succulents. Blue agave!

[hatrack]

14. NRDC's magazine had an interesting article on pine monoculture in the SE

100+ years ago, when they first clearcut the remaining upland forests in the southern Appalachians, they (inadvertently or through good sense) left the remnants alone to regrow. The result, though not the same kind of forest as originally stood there, was at least a reasonably healthy mix of species - lots of oak/hickory, along with some considerable stands of pine, cypress and spruce.

30-40 years ago, when they clearcut the region a second time, they deliberately replanted with a dense-pack monoculture of pines, mostly loblolly. Now (surprise!) this monoculture has erupted in pine bark beetle infestations on a scale never seen before and millions of knobby little pulp trees are dying even before they can be cut. "Bugwood" like this now goes to feed a glut of pulp stock, and some (not all) of the companies operating on and around the Cumberland Plateau aren't even bothering to replant, since the soil's getting pretty thin there.

[blindpig]

15. thin soil

shoot, its nonexistant. my property is on land that was farmed heavily for about 150 yrs, often cotton. Lots of old gullies from the poor practices of that era. Today the area is mostly pasture interspersed with wood lots planted with virginia pine then neglected. My woods appear to be about 50yrs old and are certainly deficient in biodiversity, although I'm still occasionally suprised by a "new" species of reptile or amphibian(my specality). I expect if things go well it will be a mostly hardwood stand in 15-20 yrs. If things go well.

[Buzz Clik]

16. Thin soil? Ha! I laugh on your beard, Galapagos Boy.

Have you not read Lomborg's "brilliant" treatise on environmentalism? He specifically addresses soil erosion and states that soil erosion is not detrimental because the soil from the eroded area settles out somewhere down the line and improves the quality of the receiving soil. So, it all balances out. (The Skeptical Environmentalist, pg 104-106).

Lomborg's analysis of soil erosion is illogical and scientifically indefensible. He obviously lacks even a shred of technical expertise in this area, and his willingness to criticize world experts in soil erosion is appalling.

[hatrack]

17. Update: Ontario Will Destroy 60,000 Ash Trees In Effort Slow Borer

LONDON, Ont.—More than 60,000 ash trees will be destroyed over the next 10 weeks in a last-ditch effort to halt the spread of the emerald ash borer across Ontario. It will be the largest tree removal operation in Ontario history.

And after being criticized for reacting slowly to the beetle threat, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has stirred further protest by announcing there will be no compensation for land owners with the trees in a 25-kilometre-long, 10-kilometre-wide "ash-free zone" to be cleared between lakes St. Clair and Erie in Chatham-Kent.

The bug has already killed 200,000 trees in and around Windsor after being detected two years ago, it has destroyed more than 1 million trees in Michigan, and it threatens the rest of Ontario's 1 billion ash trees.

Ten thousand trees have already been cut in infected areas in Essex County, said Ken Marchant, a Guelph-based CFIA tree specialist."

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