Boone Prepares for Emerald Ash Borer

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 7, 2009

Barb Wych is looking for ways to help people safeguard their ash trees through education on the devastating effects of the emerald ash borer. The Asian beetle is closing in on Boone County, and Wych is hoping to keep the notorious metallic green bug from harming her two ash trees, more specifically Fraxinus spp.

"Right now, they're not going to try to stop it, as it's beyond stopping," said Wych, a volunteer master gardener for the University of Illinois Extension office in Boone County. "Unless you're going to start treating them, they're going to die and become a hazard. With the programs that I've been involved with, it helps to manage the disposal.

"If a township has 200 ash trees, they can start getting certain bids for having them removed or they can start having their guys remove some of them before it becomes an emergency. Ideally it would be nice if there was a way to contain it, but it's beyond containment."

Wych has a spacious backyard with a deck built around a green ash planted in the late 1970s. While the emerald ash borer, which was discovered in northern Illinois in 2006, can't be contained once it hits the county, Wych wants residents and officials to become versed in how to treat the trees or put a plan in place for tree removal.

"They figure it's probably already in the county, it just hasn't demonstrated itself," she said. "This year we'll start to see some trees that are infected."

The extension office where Wych works has seen an increase of calls to its Gardening Help Desk by residents concerned about the ash trees in their home landscapes. The university began meeting with officials from the city of Belvidere and Boone County in January and has formed a management committee to get a head start on inventory and emergency planning should the pest be identified in the county. Road commissioners and township supervisors also joined the team.

"It has not been discovered in Winnebago or Boone yet, at this point, to our knowledge," said Karen Durtschi, program development and coordinator at the University of Illinois Extension office. "We're putting together a response plan. From our perspective in Boone County, the emerald ash borer has been found in McHenry County, so that's right next door to us. Because of that, there's the expectation that we could see it at some point and time. We don't know when; no one knows for sure. It could already be here and just not been detected yet."

Durtschi doesn't want the community to panic. Once a sighting of the beetle has been confirmed in the county, advisories will be issued.

"We are looking at the options of what to do from a county perspective and narrowing it down to more independent tasks that we can take at this point," she said. "It's exponential, and that's how it's been described to me. The damage when they lay their eggs — they can lay 60 or more — is magnified by 60 times, and when you have devastation of an area, it's usually found that it spreads quickly."

An infected tree will lose its ability to grow as nutrients and water will be trapped from going up the tree. The bug lays its eggs and when they hatch, the larvae burrow into the tree and feed off the sensitive layer under the bark, she said.

Wych's two ash trees were planted in 1978, two years after she purchased her home with her spouse. While Wych doesn't want to lose them, she's prepared to cut them down if the pest grows prevalent in the county.

"There are chemical injections, and there is treatment you can do," she said. "You have to evaluate if you want to take on the cost of treatment if your tree is in a fairly valuable location. Will you pay $500 a year to treat it forever? It's something you have to wrestle with and know eventually this tree is going to come down. The one on the deck I have bought the chemical to treat it; I'm even wrestling with that since we'd have to do injections and dig a trench around the tree."

Wondering what to do if the borer reaches your tree? Consider planting another type of tree in a nearby place. "Maybe start planting a smaller tree, which will get some size, while the other is killed by the ash borer," Wych said.

Helping to alleviate the spread of the borer is the Illinois Department of Agriculture's firewood importation rule, which came into effect Jan. 1. It mandates that firewood dealers pay $25 to register with the department to stop the accidental spread of the beetle. It requires that all out-of-state dealers register. IDOA's Web site (illinoiseab.com) says dealers from affected counties are not permitted to move wood products in and out of areas where the emerald ash borer has hit.

"There's a lot of researching going on to find a solution for it," Durtschi said. "We hope to do some educational presentations in the county, and we're hoping the more eyes you have out there the better."

The inventory of county trees began earlier in Boone County this month as master gardeners began performing the survey on a volunteer basis, she said. They are assessing all public access roads under the guidance of the Illinois Department of Agriculture and the extension office. It is said the inventory will continue until a number of ash trees on the county and township roads has been defined.

"We're taking it by township, and it will take us a good part of the summer," Durtschi said. "This is only the ash trees of the Fraxinus spp. variety. It's that variety that the ash borer is attracted to. People will ask about their mountain ash, and that is not an ash tree. It is exempt from it. Trees that are not at risk include maple, sycamore, elm, linden trees."

Durtschi said no funding is available for homeowners to treat their infected trees.

For more information about the borer or to file a sighting of the bug, call the University of Illinois Extension office in Belvidere, 815-544-3710.

Reach staff writer Betsy López Fritscher at bfritsch@rrstar.com or 815-544-3452.