Article published October 30, 2003
Tree beetle invades new area near Rossford plaza
By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The pesky emerald ash borer has done something many squirrels, deer, and other creatures can’t seem to do: Make it across one of the area’s busiest highways.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture yesterday found the highly destructive Asian beetle’s larvae burrowing in seven trees on the south side of U.S. 20, across the highway from the Crossroads Centre shopping plaza in Rossford. The trees are located along the four-lane road just east of Thompson Road near an auto auction firm in Perrysburg Township.
In the last month, state inspectors found 10 of 50 trees that had been brought in to help landscape the area in front of the Chili’s restaurant, Pier 1 Imports, and other out-lot stores at the front of the shopping plaza were infested. Those trees, on the north side of the highway, were purchased in 2001 from a Michigan nursery that unknowingly had been infested, officials said.
The latest discovery documented what officials feared: The emerald ash borer problem keeps spreading, despite millions of dollars spent on efforts to eradicate the tiny, metallic-green bug.
Recognized by forestry officials as a threat as deadly as Dutch Elm tree disease, the emerald ash borer has become another poster child for the havoc that can be wreaked upon a region by an invasive species. Much like the biological damage caused to the Great Lakes by the zebra mussel, researchers admit they don’t know how far the beetle can go in terms of its destruction.
But they know the value of ash trees is immense. Besides serving as beautiful trees for landscaping, ash is used in products from wood flooring to baseball bats. Hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in landscaping, timber, furniture, and woodlands could be affected.
In Ohio, timber and horticulture contribute $15 billion a year to the economy.
The Crossroads Centre planted trees long before quarantines were declared in Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario.
The sale was traced by U.S. Department of Agriculture officials who scoured through records in Michigan, the apparent epicenter of the problem. The beetle was believed to have been in Asian wood that was shipped to Michigan years ago.
Several teams of Ohio Department of Agriculture officials yesterday canvassed a two-mile radius around the Crossroads Centre development, doing some basic entomological detective work in hopes of seeing how far the problem might have spread.
With pocketknives in hand, they carved into trees that had something out of kilter, such as a patch of bruiselike discoloration - a sign of trauma that suggests a beetle might have forced its way inside. Trees with dead spots or unusual growths sprouting from them also were considered suspicious enough to have a little bark carved off for a larvae search.
Tom Harrison, an agency plant pathologist and head of Ohio’s emerald ash borer task force, said canvassers did not find larvae beyond the 17 trees in the vicinity of the shopping plaza.
All infested trees will be cut down. In the coming weeks, officials will decide how many additional trees will have to go. A certain number of healthy trees likely will be sacrificed to create a firebreak area, in hopes of keeping the beetle from spreading. Chemical treatments likely will be applied as a precaution to the perimeters of nearby trees left standing, he said.
Mr. Harrison said the work will be done before mid-May, after the larvae has evolved into its adult stage and the pest emerges like clockwork from trees in its beetle form.
Michigan’s infestation spreads throughout the southeastern part of that state, where there is a 13-county quarantine and thousands of ash trees are dead or dying. There also have been reports of the emerald ash borer in Ohio, Ontario, and the Washington suburb of Prince George’s County, Md.
Ohio’s first sighting was in Lucas County, near Whitehouse. Hundreds of trees were destroyed there last spring. In August, the beetle was found at a nursery in Hicksville in Defiance County. It also has been found in Paulding County.
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