Since the development of our country, using trees in the infrastructure has been traditional in cities, neighborhoods, parks, along streets, outside houses, and in many other situations for both aesthetic pleasure as well as the shade provided.  Ash trees have been an integral tree species for the landscaper’s choices across many American city streets and parks due to the sprawling shade they provide, adaptability, drought resistance, fast growth, large size, and beautiful canopies. 

 

The invasive beetle, Emerald Ash Borer, threatens the livelihood of all of the American Ash trees, moving from the East to the West.  Hypothesized to be introduced in the 1990s at some point, but discovered in 2002 in Michigan, these beetles target both healthy and stressed Ash trees.  With no resistant trees, predators, or parasitoid wasps, these invasive beetles have free rein to eat all the Ash trees they can until they are all gone.  It has been estimated that the Emerald Ash Borer has killed approximately 10 million Ash trees so far with the potential of many more.  This has extremely detrimental effects on wood industries, property owners, local governments, cities, residents, aesthetic values, and the economic cost it takes to remove all the dead trees and replace them. (Chen, 2021)

 

Ash tree wood is a very popular wood to be used for furniture, floors, doors, cabinets, tools, baseball bats, sports equipment, utilities, and even to store food.  As well as human uses, many wildlife species find Ash trees and Ash wood particularly useful.  Rodents such as mice, rats, and squirrels feed on Ash seeds, large birds such as Turkeys and Fowls also eat the seeds, and some standing snags of Ash trees are popular nesting spots in cavities for mammals like bats, opossums, and porcupines.  With so many uses it is catastrophic to have this extreme of a decline in the tree species’ population. With Ash trees planted along many city streets and in parks, the results of the beetle invasion are glaringly obvious by creating an unattractive eye-sore when all the dead trees are left standing in their place. (Herms, 2019)

 

The economic impacts of widespread Ash tree death from Emerald Ash Borers are hard to quantify because the loss is happening all across the country, in different states, and on different types of land (for example public and private property).  However, the USDA Forest Service estimates economic losses average approximately $ 3.4 Billion in property and landscape values, $ 2.9 Billion in tree removal costs, and $ 1.3 Billion in tree replacement in just some of the state of Ohio’s living communities in 2007, and increasing.  These losses in just one state are really high and need to be avoided in other states if possible for economic and environmental stability.  (Sydor, 2007)  There has been some short-term success using Insecticides on trees as a management strategy but this only remains effective for a few years and is too expensive to apply to large quantities of Ash trees around the country.  (Herms, 2019)  Insecticides have been used on a small amount of highly valued trees with no practical long-term or large-scale uses. (Cameron, 2020)