Narrative: Finding the Beast

When I made it to the shop on the day in early April 2009, my fellow coworkers were shouting out the news.

“It is here! The bug has landed and it is going to change everything!”

I rushed to tell them I had seen the news the night before, when the Minnesota Department of Agriculture confirmed Emerald Ash Borer’s presence in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. One of our own co-workers at Rainbow Treecare, a recently hired lanky sales arborist, found the infestation. On the news he stood near a 40-foot green ash, grinning wildly, telling the reporter how he looked closer at the boulevard trees after he responded to a homeowner’s request to examine a backyard ash. 

The news cut to the confirmation by the Department of Agriculture’s spokesperson, a tall blond-haired man who couldn’t have been over 35 years old; he spoke soberly, but with a quickened pace, as if the bugs were spreading further even as he spoke.

Our crew of arborists we drove to ground zero after a short meeting at the shop. The infestation was right off University Avenue in St. Paul, where several ash trees were partially debarked at eye level. It was early spring and silver maples had yet to break their buds. From the thin-tipped branches and deep gouges in the surface of exposed wood, we could tell the trees were toast.

The dime-sized bug currently threatens more than just the street in St. Paul. An army of them will soon be attacking Minnesota’s urban and wild forests. The Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) Fairmaire (EAB), a flying insect with emerald-colored wings from northern China, was first found in the United States in 2002.

In the short time of nine years, the EAB has posed a threat to much of northeastern North America. To slow the progression of the but, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) already imposed a quarantine on ash wood from the following states: Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, New York, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Kentucky (emeraldashborer.info).

EAB feeds on ash trees, specifically green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica). Because Minnesota is home to more ash trees than any other state in the US (besides Maine), the potential loss of forest canopy has both environmental organizations and forestry companies concerned. Many companies have come forward with suggestions to save the urban canopies in Minnesota since infestation was found in 2009 (in two separate places—St. Paul and a small town right near the Mississippi River). But the response to chemical injections and sprays is less favored than some possible biological alternatives suggested by the DOA and other environmental organizations.