Emerald Ash Borer in Missouri

As regular readers know, I am a Certified Arborist working for a private tree company in St. Louis.  I spend my days estimating tree work and evaluating tree health for homeowners, property managers, municipalities, and neighborhood associations.  At least once a week, and usually more often than that, the topic of my conversation is the Emerald Ash Borer.  This small exotic beetle was first discovered in Michigan in 2002.  Since then it has killed hundreds of thousands of ash trees throughout North America.  Many experts believe that campers transporting firewood containing Emerald Ash Borer larva have contributed to the spread of this damaging insect.    

City foresters discovered the beetle in St. Louis city for the first time in 2015.  In June/July 2015 I vacationed in Michigan and saw the damage first hand.  There were dead/dying ash trees everywhere you looked along the roadside and in the woods.  There also were hardly any trees remaining in the urban areas, as certainly they were removed as they became hazardous.  So when I returned to St. Louis, I began inspecting every ash tree I saw very closely, looking for the beetle or signs that it had been there.  By mid-July I came upon a neighborhood in Creve Coeur where multiple trees showed signs of EAB infestation, to include ‘D’ shaped exit holes, excessive epicormic shoots, and ‘blonding’ of the bark from where woodpeckers had worked over the tree looking for the larvae.  I would estimate that there were over 30 trees on just once street showing these symptoms.  Below are a few photos from that time period:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did not find any beetles or larvae, but reached out to the community forester from the Missouri Department of Conservation.  Within a few weeks the presence of EAB had been confirmed in the area when a MoDot crew found larvae in a tree or trees just a few blocks away near Page and Scheutz.

Since then, I have personally found over 100 trees in St. Louis County with these same signs, most of them in Creve Coeur, Westport, and Chesterfield, and a few in north county.  Finally in mid-May 2017 I found a swarm of mature EAB beetles around a series of ash trees we were preparing to remove in the Westport area.  Here are a few photos of the beetles and short video I took:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I share this info just to let you know that this destructive pest is here and is a real threat to our home landscapes as well as our forests, as the ash is a native tree and widespread in our area.  In addition to using only local firewood when we camp, there are chemical treatments that are effective at controlling the EAB, and many property owners are taking this approach.  This will slow the spread of the beetle and prolong the life of your valuable trees.  If you have ash trees on your property, at the very least you should begin coming up with a management plan now to get ahead of the inevitable infestation on its way to our area. I recommend having your trees inspected by an ISA Certified Arborist to inspect for EAB and to discuss your options.  I am one of six Certified Arborists at Gamma Tree Experts, and you can set up an appointment by calling the office at 314-867-2363.  If you would prefer working with another company, great, just make sure that you speak with a Certified Arborist.

 For more information about the risk of moving firewood, check out this link:

https://www.dontmovefirewood.org

For more detailed information about the Emerald Ash Borer, check out

www.emeraldashborer.info

As always, thank you for reading.  Get out and enjoy our great forests that we have in Missouri!

 

Written by: PJ McCaslin