Longtime Blaine ecological consultant Jason Husveth says if you see places where the bark has flaked away and tiny holes shaped like the letter ‘D’ in an ash tree, it’s days are numbered. Those holes are created by the ash borer as it leaves the tree.
“A lot of trees out here at the sanctuary and at Pioneer Park are completely dead and standing,” said Husveth, a principle ecologist with Critical Connection Ecological Services.
Husveth says they’ve been watching for the Emerald Ash Borer to make its way here from Michigan where it was first discovered about ten years ago. More recently, in the last two years, he says the bug and its destructive work has shown up in Blaine’s ash trees in abundance.
“You really have to look up in the tree in the upper canopy to start to see the stress,” Husveth said. “During the growing season you’ll start to see the loss of leaves and vigor and yellowing of the foliage even before you see the signs of the bark starting to peel. About a year after the symptoms show up on the surface, the tree is pretty much dead.”
When the city restored this area several years ago, they left behind as many healthy ash trees as possible. But now even those are diseased and can become very fragile. City officials say they pose fire and safety hazards.
“The ash trees are dead and diseased some of them, depending on when the beetle infected them are completely dead, so they could fall over at any point,” said Rebecca Haug, Blaine’s Water Resources Manager. “Some are more recently diseased so they have about a year or two before they’re completely dead and fall over.”
Haug says by removing the dead trees, it will be easier to continue the restoration process. The city has been working to restore 500 acres of the Wetland Sanctuary which involves removing invasive vegetation. That restoration work will continue in the southern end of the sanctuary even as the ash trees elsewhere are removed this winter.
“There’s two separate projects going on,” says Haug. In the northern and central are we are removing ash trees, the southern portion is full restoration which involves many other species of trees that are invasive and non-native to the eco-system.”
Work on the ash trees begins as soon as the ground freezes enough to bring in heavy equipment.
The city recently approved a contract for $38,531 to remove the dead ash trees. They say they were able to save money by using the same contractor who is already on site doing the restoration work.
