More ash borer news

dodge guy wrote:
Our village and surrounding towns/cities lost all of our ash trees. No campgrounds in a 50 mile radius, yet the campgrounds still have their ash trees intact and healthy. So if transporting firewood was the problem, you would think the campgrounds would've lost thier trees also?

As was stated he EAB will travel on its own no matter what we think we can do! But it is easier and feels better to point the finger than accept what nature has given us to deal with!

Err but does anyone burn wood in your town or the nearby ones?
Something to think on.

I appreciate govts being proactive with a known problem.

Still have a mental picture of the beautiful elm trees that used to be in NYC.

Very sad, here in Northern NY, Ash and Maple make up much of the forests. The farm land that I hunt has some beautiful Ash trees. The beetle is close to my area, if not already here.

dodge guy wrote:
Our village and surrounding towns/cities lost all of our ash trees. No campgrounds in a 50 mile radius, yet the campgrounds still have their ash trees intact and healthy. So if transporting firewood was the problem, you would think the campgrounds would've lost thier trees also?

As was stated he EAB will travel on its own no matter what we think we can do! But it is easier and feels better to point the finger than accept what nature has given us to deal with!

The Mountain Ash is not affected by the EAB. It is very possible that the the campground you are referring to has the Mountain Ash.

Dave H M wrote:
So does wood other than ash carry the EAB?

Yes, the EAB gas jumped to the White Fringhetree. White Fringetree is native to the United States and grows wild from New Jersey south to Florida and west to Oklahoma and Texas. It is also a popular ornamental tree that has been planted in other parts of the country.

NYCgrrl wrote:

dodge guy wrote:
Our village and surrounding towns/cities lost all of our ash trees. No campgrounds in a 50 mile radius, yet the campgrounds still have their ash trees intact and healthy. So if transporting firewood was the problem, you would think the campgrounds would've lost thier trees also?

As was stated he EAB will travel on its own no matter what we think we can do! But it is easier and feels better to point the finger than accept what nature has given us to deal with!

Err but does anyone burn wood in your town or the nearby ones?
Something to think on.

I appreciate govts being proactive with a known problem.

Still have a mental picture of the beautiful elm trees that used to be in NYC.

You're preaching to the Devil. Dodge guy is a wood carrier and likes to rationalize his habits.

westend wrote:

NYCgrrl wrote:

dodge guy wrote:
Our village and surrounding towns/cities lost all of our ash trees. No campgrounds in a 50 mile radius, yet the campgrounds still have their ash trees intact and healthy. So if transporting firewood was the problem, you would think the campgrounds would've lost thier trees also?

As was stated he EAB will travel on its own no matter what we think we can do! But it is easier and feels better to point the finger than accept what nature has given us to deal with!

Err but does anyone burn wood in your town or the nearby ones?
Something to think on.

I appreciate govts being proactive with a known problem.

Still have a mental picture of the beautiful elm trees that used to be in NYC.

You're preaching to the Devil. Dodge guy is a wood carrier and likes to rationalize his habits.

Who says I carry wood beyond a 50 mile radius? Never said I do.

I'm talking as a clear thinking human being. Not someone who has been programmed to think I'm the one causing the problems. This is nature at work, nothing much we can do about it! Sure we can point fingers and blame the other guy, fact is the EAB is going to travel even if every person stayed home and didn't travel!

dodge guy wrote:
This is nature at work, nothing much we can do about it!

Amen, dodge guy. Millions (billions?) of years hence, the sun will run out of hydrogen, expand, and burn the earth to a cinder.

Given all that, why bother, right?

We lost several gumbo limbo trees to the EAB, brought in, I read, by the last hurricane that hit this part of Florida. The gumbo limbo is a native Florida tree and thought to be immune to most local insects but not to the EAB. Bayer makes a systematic that can be spread on the ground around the trees if you catch it in time, which I did for about half my trees.

Something else blew in with that storm that killed the oaks I had in the yard but didn't bother my hickory trees. Who knows.

Yeah, Bayer makes Imidacloprid, a systemic insecticide which is listed for EAB. I've done some soil injecting with it for EAB.

Fizz wrote:
In a perfect world the bugs would have eaten themselves out of house and home and died off. They would have most likely cleaned out a State or three but that would have been all... in a perfect world.
With the help of knuckleheads they managed to spread all over.

Not sure what world you live in, or what your understanding of insect ecology is. I don't think we've had a perfect world since Adam and Eve got the boot from the garden. The combined range for the three most common types of Ash (White, Green and Black Ash) covers more than 1/2 the land area of the continental US, and several provinces in Canada. So I'm not sure how your perfect world would allow the EAB to eat itself out of house and home after only 2 or 3 states. While these bugs don't move very fast on their own, they can fly up to 10 kilometers.

Don't get me wrong, as a professional forester, I understand the need for quarantines and firewood restrictions. The whole objective is to slow the spread, not stop it, because that is NOT possible. Clearly, the transportation of wood (in all its raw forms, not just firewood) quickens the dispersal of the insects to new locations, so regulations must be put into effect.

Unfortunately, people want to have it all. You want cheap products from China? Well those products often come in packaging that contains wood pallets and containers and those materials harbor bugs (that is the best guess as to how EAB got to Michigan and Ontario in the first place). Chicago, New York and other cities have battled the Asian Long Horned Beetle. It arrived in fake Christmas trees imported from Asia. Regulations now require fake trees with wood trunks to be kiln dried to kill the bugs. But it is always a catch up game, the new regulations came after the bugs had already arrived. Such is the price we pay for global trade and desiring to have cheap products.

There is a price to pay for everything and every action has good and bad effects. THAT is the world we live in, both the economic AND the ecologic aspects.

Again, there were only two people who ever experienced the "perfect world" And both of them ate the apple, and that was the end of that. And here we are.