CorrugatedPallets.com | Battle against ash beetle branches out in Ontario

Battle against ash beetle branches out in Ontario

This document originally appeared at: http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/CBC/2002/12/07/ash_beetle021207
Date Modified: 2002-12-08

WINDSOR, ONT. — A group trying to save Ontario ash trees from a destructive insect is hoping some landowners will sacrifice their timber to save entire forests.

In July, the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed that the emerald ash borer had spread into the Windsor area.

The beetles, which attack and kill ash trees, had been detected in nearby Michigan earlier in the year. At the time, scientists weren’t sure what the insects were. The pest has since been identified, and is believed to have slipped into North America on rough-hewn wood pallets from Asia.

The CFIA recently banned the export of ash from the Windsor area. Now it's come up with a proposal to stop hungry adult beetles from flying farther into Canada.

The agency is recommending two five-kilometre wide “firebreaks” be cut in Essex County. Under the plan, all ash trees in these corridors would be chopped down before thousands of larvae hatch in the spring.

“You’re looking for an area where there is no natural ash, or very little,” said Ken Marchant of the CFIA. Ash trees in this buffer zone would either be removed or treated in some way “so that the beetle could not reproduce on them and jump to other areas.”

Some of the proposed logging would be on private property, so landowners need to be persuaded to take part.

On Saturday, a group called the Ash Rescue Coalition sponsored a bus trip to Point Pelee National Park. It wants to show people how the region’s fragile ecosystem would be at risk if the beetle spreads.

“Some of these trees are ash trees, and if the Borer gets to this location they will likely be goners,” noted a guide as the bus made its way along wooded roads.

One landowner, Brett Groves, said culling ash trees makes sense if it helps stop the beetle. “It's something we’ll have to accept,” he said.

The size of the beetle infestation is difficult to estimate because the signs of an emerald ash borer attack are sometimes not obvious for a year or longer, according to entomologists.

The CFIA wants to begin cutting down ash trees to create a buffer zone by the end of the winter, before a new population of pests is born.