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The News-Times, Danbury, Conn., Robert Miller column: Beetles threaten vital part of our forests
Jun 27, 2009 (The News-Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The bad news came out from the West this week -- another dreadful tree-killing pest, the emerald ash borer, had crossed state lines, moving from the Midwest into New York.
"There's actually a closer infestation, in Mifflin, Pa." said Rose Hiskes, a diagnostician with the insect division of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
All it would take is a truck hauling dead ash firewood, with a few borers included in the load, to move it closer still.
Should it get established in Connecticut, it would be the final chapter for the beautiful, straight-limbed ash tree in Connecticut.
"The U.S, Department of Agriculture isn't trying to stop the emerald ash beetle anymore," Hiskes said. "It's moved to the slow-the-spread stage."
Arborists found the emerald ash borer -- so named because of its bright green color -- in Michigan in 2002. The best guess is that it rode wooden packing material on a cargo ship or airplane from Asia to the New World.
Since its arrival, it has spread throughout the Great Lakes states through the Midwest to Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York, and north into Ontario and Quebec.
While adult borers nibble nicely on the ash tree leaves, it's the larvae -- which feeds on the inner bark of the tree -- that kill it, by disrupting the flow of water and nutrients through the whole tree.
What makes the borer so threatening to Connecticut ashes is that these trees are already in danger, with two diseases -- ash yellows and ash anthracnose -- already killing them.
"It's one thing after another," Hiskes said. If the borer starts killing them, she said, "it will be the final nail in the coffin."
Ashes are a vital part of the Connecticut forest scene.
While not as dominant as oaks or maples, ashes feed small mammals -- voles and mice and chipmunks -- with the seeds they drop. Those small mammals are food for bigger ones.
Ashes also add their individual grace notes to the fall foliage -- reds, dark crimson, even purples. Our eyes would be poorer without them.
Thomas Philbrick of Newtown, a professor of biological and environmental sciences at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, said that, like it or not, this is what humans do. We move things around -- sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately.
Sometimes it's for the good, sometimes not so good.
"We've been doing this for hundreds of years," Philbrick said. "No doubt Marco Polo moved species around when he went to China. Maybe the only difference is now, we're more aware of what we're doing."
Contact Robert Miller
at bmiller@newstimes.com
or at (203) 731-3345.
To see more of the News-Times or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.newstimes.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The News-Times, Danbury, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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