The US Department of Agriculture is gearing up for a battle against beetle, fearing the emerald ash borer would invade the east-central part of the country within the next two decades.
The exotic beetle, which already has a sizeable presence in 1,200 cities and townships, including Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, is now threatening to spread outside the Great Lakes states.
If nothing is done to prevent the invasion, the beetle would infest more than 12,000 municipalities by 2027, Philip Bell, an official in the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, informed.
Bell, however, is confident that the UDSA can confine the beetle in the Great Lake states before completely destroying it.
Bell said
We have a grand opportunity to push this thing back.
People like Frank Boyle, a forestry committee member, however is not that optimistic and feels ash tree owners would do well to cut down the trees and sell it off before the beetles take over.
Boyle said
Get what you can now, because the bugs, they be coming.
Jane Cummings Carlson, the state Department of Natural Resources’ forest health protection coordinator, has already calculated the estimated loss. According to him, the bug could gobble up 717 million ash trees in rural forest and 5.4 million along the streets in Wisconsin and the loss would be to the tune of $4 billion.
The beetles, native to Asia, probably arrived in the US in wood packing crates and have been thriving since it was first discovered in the Detroit area in 2002. It’s a tiny, green creature that eats into the part just under the ash tree bark, which cuts off water and kills the tree.
Photo credit: AP