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EMERALD ASH BORER

During a January 26 meeting of the Alta Vista Planning Group, Councillor Peter Hume advised that beginning in the last week of February, 111 infected trees are scheduled for removal, in an industrial area off Smyth east of Haig. He said the bug has been spreading from the Ogilvie Road area into the Canterbury area. The City of Ottawa’s resident forester is scheduled to make a presentation at the next meeting; details will be posted shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, in case you missed it, here’s an abridged version of a January 27 item in The Ottawa Citizen:

A new study that evaluated three ways of stopping the borer has found only one that really works: repeated use of an insecticide, TreeAzin. Chemical-free methods such as quarantining, which Ottawa hoped would slow the destruction, won't stop the invasive little beetle that threatens to kill Ottawa's 75,000 ash trees, says the study in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.

Rodrigo Mercador, the Michigan State University entomologist who conducted the study, says the infestation will cause destruction much like Dutch elm disease did in the 1970s. “In a lot of cases when the elm was gone, they replanted with ash,” he said. The beetle arrived in Michigan sometime in the 1990s (possibly in wooden packing crates from Asia) and was recognized in Ottawa in 2008. Mercader investigated three possible solutions:

·       Removal of large numbers of trees from infested areas.

·       Girdling, which eventually kills trees, but it attracts egg-laying female borers which prefer sick trees that are then are logged and burned.

·       Injection of  TreeAzin, into each tree every two years at an average cost of $150-$300.

Although labour intensive and costly to save all ash trees in a city, the third option is considered the only effective one. The Central Experimental Farm is treating all ashes in the Arboretum and only the healthiest 26 of the more than 100 along Ash Lane. While the insecticide approach is expensive, an Eastern Ontario Arborists representative expects that the borers will migrate out of the region in about 10 years, negating the need for insectide. However, that theory is challenged by Mercader and a University of Quebec forester.

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