Forest Service leads initiative to prepare for pest


BY BECKY ERDKAMP, NEBRASKA FOREST SERVICE

Featured in The Scarlet

The Nebraska Forest Service is leading a multi-state initiative to prepare for the emerald ash borer.

First detected in southeast Michigan in 2002, emerald ash borer, or EAB, is an exotic beetle that attacks and kills all native ash species, including white, green, black and autumn purple ash. To date, the beetle is present in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Ontario, Canada and has killed approximately 25 million ash trees.

With the help of a $1 million U.S. Forest Service grant, the Nebraska Forest Service, in partnership with state forestry agencies in Kansas, South Dakota and North Dakota, is engaging in a regional initiative to prepare for the insect's arrival.

The initiative represents the first time states have worked together to prepare for such a significant forest health threat.

'This is a major regional project that will serve as a model of how states can work together to address regional and national problems caused by an invasive species,' said Scott Josiah, state forester and director, Nebraska Forest Service.

'There is no doubt EAB will be a disaster for our communities, but it is a disaster we can prepare for. It will be similar to Dutch Elm disease in the 1960s, which rapidly killed millions of trees in Nebraska and dramatically converted lush urban forests to barren, shadeless urban landscapes,' Josiah said.

Because of ash's popularity in rural and urban plantings, its loss would dramatically alter landscapes across the state. Current estimates show that some Nebraska communities could lose 25 to 50 percent of their tree resources, and the cost of removing and replacing trees lost to EAB could exceed $1.5 billion.

The goals of the initiative are to assess each state's ash resource and develop educational programs to inform the public of EAB and its threats, regional monitoring and detection networks and markets for waste wood generated by EAB.