It is considered one of the most destructive of invasive pests in North America.
Now the northwestern Ontario city of Thunder Bay has launched an awareness campaign about the Emerald Ash Borer. It’s a small beetle originally from Asia only a couple of centimetres long, but has already destroyed tens of thousands of majestic ash trees in the US and Canada.
It was believed to have arrived in Michigan from Asia in ash wood used in shipping pallets or containers, First detected in 2002, it has since spread to surrounding states and the southern trees of Ontario and other provinces.
“It’s killed hundreds of millions of trees. It will change the ecosystems. You’ll lose all the ecosystem services associated with those trees.” Shelley Vescio
The city of Hamilton, in southern Ontario has had to cut down several thousand ash trees already and expects it will lose over 22,000 ash trees in its jurisdiction.
Emerald Ash borer- destruction.
The insect was detected as far east as Montreal in 2008. Robert Lavallée, a pest management research scientist for Natural Resources Canada, said one in five trees in Montreal is ash — that adds up to 200,000 trees, not including the ones on private property and on Mount-Royal.
Because of a warming climate, the insect is now making it’s way slowly northward and has the potential to wipe out the entire species of tree, which has no real defence against the alien insect.
Qouted in a CBC story, city of Thunder Bay forester Shelley Vescio says “It totally devastates all species of ash and it’s killed hundreds of millions of trees. It will change the ecosystems. You’ll lose all the ecosystem services associated with those trees.”
A 2013 report by the Canadian Forest Service showed that 98 percent of trees in an area will die within five years of detection of EAB, and will cost billions of dollars in efforts to fight it, and remove and replace dead trees.
The Thunder Bay EAB awareness ribbon campaign began last Thursday. “When you see ribbons down both sides of a block or in a park, then it really means something to you,” Vescio said. She believes it’s only a matter of time before the emerald ash borer’s presence will be felt in Thunder Bay.
“What we’re hoping is that we can find it early enough in its infestation that we can keep the populations down,” she said
**” with files from CBC
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