I love ash trees. They are also a "bailout" tree up where people still burn wood in stoves for warmth, as they can pretty much be burnt the day they're cut, they're so dry. I spent at least one winter burning quite a bit of ash because I did not plan ahead.
That said, as a stoic, this line in the article causes me to chuckle a little to myself: "So, if we want the landscape to look the same in the future, we need to value our trees more."
As though valuing something provides a promise that the future will never change. I don't mean to be cruel, but this is the same sort of misunderstanding of the Earth and Universe as we know it that will only ever end in pain and suffering.
Do what you can to stop the emerald bore beetle. My town has managed to keep Dutch elm disease's progress very slow in our town, and now some of our trees are being used to grow disease resistant trees to replant elsewhere. If you are pragmatic and unemotional about things, you can help preserve the things you love for some time, but nothing lasts forever. We would all do well to remember that.
The cool, beautiful canopy of my hometown street was destroyed by Dutch elm disease. In the woods behind my house, my grandfather planted a row of hemlock trees before I was born. Now his legacy is being destroyed by another invasive from Asia, the woolly adelgid. With the elm and hemlock gone, we have mostly sugar maples, white pine, and ash tree remaining. The maples ares sickened from air pollution and just last year I noticed our pines turning brown from needlecast. And now I hear the ash borer is coming.
Between the stress of pollution/climate change and allowing these invasive pests on our soil, the US government has totally failed us. Trees are majestic, vital to the ecosystem, and the lungs of our planet. Why are our policies so backwards that we can spend $5 Trillion on war based on lies of WMD? Yet we lack the millions necessary to improve border controls and research curing diseases that slipped through already.
Unfortunately border control is not very effective,
but hopefully it will be possible to use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive to eliminate pests same way as mosquitos
I really like the ash tree too. I remember seeing a bow made of it, but I think the person told me it wasn't the best wood for a longbow; he said yew was.
I remember the hemlocks were in trouble in the late 90s during a gypsy moth breakout in the NE US. Neighbors were spending a fortune trying to protect their trees. I didn't have the money to put into it, and I was lucky.
I had about eight of them on my property, and I didn't do anything, and in the end, I only lost one. Two of the others looked beyond recovery, but I left them, and today they are good again. Some of my neighbors lose that number, or more and they had spent a couple of thousand of dollars over two years trying to protect them. I don't knock their efforts, since I am a tree lover.
Let's hope this invasive beetle meets some obstacle like the cold where it can get cold, or a domestic predator finds them tasty!
What I've seen and (briefly) read from this article seem to agree - as soon as the Emerald Ash Borer appears in the UK, it's game over for us. We've (UK) been suffering from ash dieback in a very large way, and although we seem to have got it under containment via selective killing/leaving to rot of certain trees we're very aware that a large proportion of our remaining Ash's could go very quickly. I know of a few people that have worked with trying to work with different lichen species that favour Ash trees and transplant them onto others with varying success - the same was tried with species that favoured Elm trees before they died back. It just seems a shame that there's not too much we can see to do about it. (This all comes from a UG perspective, albiet one with extensive lichen experience and some experience of conserving some of the oldest woodland in the UK, so other opinions very much welcomed!!)
It's likely this will all follow the same path as Dutch Elm Disease- when was the last time you saw a big old elm tree in front of a house?
Still, the solution may be the same: slowly begin to develop trees resistant to the thing killing it. Perhaps some GMO or crossbreeding with whatever genes allow Asian ash to survive the beetles.
The ash borer is now considered "established" in the US which means that eradication efforts have stopped. They're onto the "Control" phase where they try to find the invaders natural control in its native country.
So essentially the Ash tree is in real trouble (we have a very large city ash behind my building..I'm hoping its isolation protects it, but I"m not supper hopeful)
I'm dealing with this here, it's so sad to watch. Entire huge stands of dead trees all around. I have a bunch of HUGE ash in the back yard that I'm hoping will survive after several hundred dollars of treatments. With Sudden Oak Death out west and this here in the east, it's worrying to see what's happening to some common trees.
That said, as a stoic, this line in the article causes me to chuckle a little to myself: "So, if we want the landscape to look the same in the future, we need to value our trees more."
As though valuing something provides a promise that the future will never change. I don't mean to be cruel, but this is the same sort of misunderstanding of the Earth and Universe as we know it that will only ever end in pain and suffering.
Do what you can to stop the emerald bore beetle. My town has managed to keep Dutch elm disease's progress very slow in our town, and now some of our trees are being used to grow disease resistant trees to replant elsewhere. If you are pragmatic and unemotional about things, you can help preserve the things you love for some time, but nothing lasts forever. We would all do well to remember that.