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The emerald ash borer has left its mark, like this one on a tree in Dearborn Heights, throughout the state, despite containment efforts.Ash borer war falters in Michigan
Pest invades the U.P., threatens to spread into Wis.; could wipe out trees in eastern North America.
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The discovery of the emerald ash borer in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is strong evidence the state is losing the battle with the deadly beetle that already has destroyed more than 15 million ash trees in the state, according to experts.
Scientists and wood industry experts fear that the prolific beetle, which reproduces by the thousands per tree, now will escape from the Upper Peninsula and move into Wisconsin.
With ash trees in Ohio, Indiana and Ontario under attack, some experts fear the pest could eventually wipe out the ash tree population of eastern North America. Industry losses, from furniture to landscaping to Native American cultural baskets to baseball bats, could run into the billions, according to a study funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
In 2002, agriculture department officials identified the core area of ash borer infestation as six counties around Metro Detroit. Today, that core, which is under a quarantine prohibiting the movement of any wood out of those areas, covers 20 counties, extending as far north as Saginaw.
In addition, outbreaks have been confirmed or reported in another 30 counties, including two in the Upper Peninsula. Since 2003, the number of outbreaks has nearly tripled.
Dr. Hugh MacIsaac, an expert in invasive species at the University of Windsor, who is a co-author of the Canadian ash study, is also pessimistic about Michigan's ability to stop the beetle.
"In the Great Lakes region, this beetle invasion is mushrooming out like an atomic bomb going off," MacIsaac said. "If you look at the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and how this invasion proceeded since 2002, this distribution is just too extensive and it's so patchy the manpower required to find all the infected trees would be extraordinary. Over the next 10 years, I would not be surprised to see it everywhere."
Ken Rauscher, who heads the emerald ash borer program for the Michigan Department of Agriculture, said despite the checker board appearance of ash outbreaks around the state, his department's efforts are effectively combating the spread of the ash borer.
"I don't see that as an indication of rapid spread, I see that as an indication that we are able to detect it better where it already was," Rauscher said. "In almost every case, (we believe) they have been there for two or three years or before the quarantine. So it is not necessarily spreading but they are infestations that are coming to light."
Rauscher said Michigan's eradication strategy is a sound one that was developed with scientists and researchers from Michigan State University.
However, Dr. David Roberts, who is the Michigan State University horticulture specialist who discovered the emerald ash borer in the Detroit area in 2002, said he believes the discovery of the beetle in September in ash trees in Brimley is only the tip of the problem in the Upper Peninsula.
"I expected it to be up there years ago simply because people have been taking firewood up north ... and it's probably in dozens of locations up there that they simply have not located yet," he said.
Rauscher, however, downplayed the significance of the insect showing up in Brimley.
He said the state has looked at more than 300 private woods and public campgrounds without finding any infestations. A second site in neighboring Luce County has been monitored for two years without any sign of spreading after someone brought in infested firewood.
In 2002, the state began an eradication strategy that included a quarantine of the six infected Metro area counties, and cutting down and reducing ash trees into one-inch chips for disposal in a wood burning power plant in Flint. The state also has cut down all healthy ash trees within half a mile of the infected trees in the outlying sites in hopes of destroying food supplies for the ash borer.
Rauscher said Michigan State University scientists assured the agriculture department that chipping wood to one inch in size would make it safe to move ash out of the quarantine zone up to Flint. Since then, hundreds of thousands of tons of ash wood has been taken by truck and at times stockpiled at the Flint power plant.
In an experiment Roberts conducted this summer, he had ash logs chipped to the same specifications used by the state. In a bucket containing nine pounds of chips, he found four live beetles that survived the process.
"By moving chips like these out of the Detroit area to Flint, the state may have violated its own quarantine and moved the insect up to Flint," Roberts said.
Roberts and MacIsaac also are skeptical the beetle can be contained within a half-mile barrier where healthy trees are cut down around diseased ones.
"From what we know, using our most conservative approach, is the farthest any can fly is five kilometers or about three miles," MacIsaac said. "One or two can start new colonies in distant locations."
Rauscher acknowledged the beetle's range could be as much as three miles but said it does not appear the insect flies farther than the next tree and its next meal.
"While they are capable of flying three miles, they tend to be lazy insects and fly no farther than 100 yards or to the next tree," he said. Rauscher, Roberts and MacIsaac all agreed that Michigan's biggest problem containing the ash borer is people moving firewood around the state.
Rauscher said stricter controls recently put into effect should impact that problem.
In September, the state Legislature increased the penalty for people found violating the quarantine to $1,000 from $100, with provisions that the fine could go as high as $250,000 for anyone guilty of deliberately putting state resources at risk. So far, 30 prosecutions have stemmed from violations, he said.
He said with the state ash borer eradication budget reduced from $29.9 million to $12.7 this year, the strategy now is to concentrate on the "gateway" areas out of the state, the Mackinac Bridge and the southern borders with Ohio and Indiana.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture designated Michigan's agriculture department as the lead agency in the fight against the ash borer because the most advanced outbreak of dead trees was found in Metro Detroit and the beetle was discovered in the state.
Since May, agriculture department inspectors have been checking for firewood at the bridge.
Roberts said the emerald ash borer is taking the same shape as Dutch elm disease.
"This is the way Dutch elm disease started out, in a small isolated area and then took several decades for it to move through the United States," he said. "It was discovered in the 1930s and '40s and Detroit encountered it in the '60s and '70s. That, I'm afraid, is what people in other states have to look forward to with the emerald ash borer as well."
To ease that disaster, the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March sought the help of members of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs to collect seeds from the four species of ash trees. The seeds will be stored at the National Center for Genetic Resource Preservation Center in Fort Collins, Colo., for future use.
You can reach Norman Sinclair at (313) 222-2034 or nsinclair@ detnews.com.
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