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.