Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: EAB and using dogs for detection
A fellow employee just asked me what could be wrong with his Ash tree. The top canopy was dying. UH OH! That’s one of the major signs of Emerald Ash Borer.
So I told him to look under the bark and check for the squiggly lines from the larvae.
Turns out EAB is killing his tree, and he has a lot more, as do his neighbors.
He lives in a community of large wooded lots. They won’t be wooded too much longer as the trees are cut down and burned. They’ll try to save some of the larger trees with chemicals.
The Wisconsin Extension has a Homeowner’s Guide to EAB chemical Treatment.
Tree location, value, and health, as well as the cost of treatment are all factors to consider. If you choose to use chemicals know what you’re getting. Read the label thoroughly.
More than 50 million ash trees have been destroyed by EAB.
The State of Minnesota is using EAB sniffing dogs. Working Dogs for Conservation have been taught to detect ash borer eggs, larvae, and adults in wood products to help prevent the movement of infested wood in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. Since removing and replacing a single tree can cost thousands of dollars, the economic impacts of infestation are as high as the ecological ones. The dogs have been able to find EAB infested wood quicker than humans.
However, it’s not cheap to do that so using the dogs isn’t real widespread yet.
What is absolutely widespread is the destruction of Ash Trees all over the country.
Michigan State University Ext. information on EAB