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When Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals grabbed his Louisville Slugger bat and stepped up to the plate at the 2006 World Series championship game, a tiny green bug from Asia was probably the furthest thing from his mind. But while Molina was scoring his two runs, that little Asian bug, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), was rapidly destroying the very trees from which the legendary bats are made.
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EAB is an exotic beetle that is killing American ash trees throughout the Midwestern United States. Its potential impact on the game of baseball aside, EAB is already having a large ecologic and economic effect.
Asian roots
A fairly harmless insect to the EAB-resistant Manchurian ash trees of northeast China, this beetle became a devastating pest to the American ash when it arrived in Detroit in 2002, in Chinese packing materials.
Because EAB only attacked sick Manchurian ash trees in Asia, infestations were minimal, and research on the insect nonexistent. When it began infesting trees in the United States, scientists had to start the identification and research process from scratch. By the time EAB was identified, the Detroit area was already heavily infested. To date, more than 15 million ash trees have been destroyed in Michigan alone.
In 2004, EAB was first discovered in Indiana.
Rural and urban devastation
Officials from Purdue University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) are working together to slow the spread of EAB through educational campaigns to curtail the movement of firewood; statewide quarantines to keep infested ash materials from traveling; information on treatments to protect trees; and the removal and replacement of ash trees to prevent them from becoming a safety hazard.
“Ash trees not only make up 6 percent (147 million) of the trees in Indiana forests, but, in some communities, ash trees account for more than 40 percent of the street trees,” says Jodie Ellis, Purdue Extension EAB specialist.
Infestations are patchy in Indiana, but Huntington, a small city near Fort Wayne, has been hit hard. “Huntington has an abundance of ash trees,” says Vince Burkle, nursery inspector for IDNR. “Throughout Huntington County, ash trees number in the millions. Many of these trees are infested with EAB and are going to have to be removed. The larger trees are dying out, causing parks to lose their shade.”
Dead trees threaten both municipal budgets and public safety. “The economic impact on towns, cities and parks is going to be very large,” Ellis says. “In the end, that’s going to affect individuals, because these communities are going to have to raise taxes to cover the costs.”
As ash becomes a scarcer resource, many industries could suffer as well. “Ash is a very flexible but strong hardwood useful in many common products,” Ellis says, “including tool handles, furniture and flooring. One of the most common uses of ash is for firewood, because it burns beautifully, even if it is still a little green.”
Projected pathway
While firewood may be one of the most practical uses of ash, it has been the most problematic in EAB’s spread.
“On its own, the insect isn’t really going to move very far, maybe a half mile a year,” Ellis says. “If that was the only way it moved, we really wouldn’t have a problem. But the projected path of EAB is wherever people take ash wood—and that could be virtually anywhere.”
For information on how you can help protect Indiana’s ash trees from EAB, visit Purdue Extension’s EAB Web site http://www.entm.purdue.edu/EAB/
Contact Jennifer Stewart at jsstewar@purdue.edu
Another American tree falls victim to invasive species
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