We had a tree man here last night, walking our little lot in our quiet subdivision in Ann Arbor and shaking his head as he surveyed the damage. We have two ash trees, one a lovely purpose-planted shade tree (about as old as would be expected if it was planed when the elm trees all died), and a volunteer, planted in a corner by a squirrel or a bird on a wire.

Like every other ash tree in the US, they are going to die.

I was appalled to hear my neighbor say they other day that she had never heard of the Emerald Ash Borer before. I suppose she’s not much of a gardener, or maybe not much of a newspaper reader, or something. But anybody walking down the streets, driving in the country, or hiking for a 100-mile radius around here will see the signs of carnage. Bare branches on all the tallest trees in the woodlots, literally hundreds of new stumps and piles of chips along the streets of the suburbs, dead twigs planted along the sidewalks downtown.

All with the telltale D-shaped holes in them.

We are advised (not by my tree man, but by the local governments [PDF] and other, more “professional” tree services, the kind that have logos on their trucks and sell chemical treatments by the ml and who haul away all the chips when they’re done to sell them as mulch) that the only way to hold back the “wave” of Ash Borer infestation is chip every ash tree in sight in the city (at a cost), and burn the resulting chips.

Maybe they don’t get out much. Maybe they’re deluded fools. Maybe they’re in cahoots, the government and the tree services. Clearly, they act as if they have never witnessed one of these bugs (as I have) scamper out of sight when I was more than three meters away — these are not ladybugs or gypsy moths, but are rather quick, fast, smart, travel long distances easily and are as a result ubiquitous.

More than likely they have no idea what to do. There are many smart young biologists attending to this problem, and I wish them the best of luck. But the government fails so often to act decisively and swiftly, let alone on the basis of scientific advice, that I can only hope their work does not end up going to waste.

About one tree in five in the urban or the rural sections of our region is an ash tree. There is an effectively unlimited supply of the insects in those reservoirs, and barring total deforestation, or discovery (or engineering) of a super-effective parasite or predator that eats the bugs or larvae, there is no way to eliminate them.

My tree man points out, with much disgust, that a dozen or so companiesin the area are hawking expensive “preventive” chemical measures, none of which are guaranteed. His keen insight: If these preventives are so neat, then why not give them to the city, demonstrate conclusively their effectiveness, and then sell them to the surrounding threatened areas of the country? Or, if you’re a city presented witha dozen alternatives, why not demand that all of them be used in randomized trials, and publish the results?

Alas, this is not the way the world works. They study, they watch, and in the end move much slower and with less cunning than the bug.

Looking out the windows of my house, I see eight ash trees, and twenty-seven other trees (locusts, spruce, white pine, fruit, oak, maple, &c). That’s about 25% deforestation. From this bug.

Down the road a piece, in Chicago, they have Asian Longhorned Beetles. They eat maples, among other things. I see eight maples out my window — they’re the other tree that was planted along the streets back when the elms died….

If you live in the northern US (east or west), and own land that has trees on it that you like, I would advise your attention to the matter.