Bad news, EAB discovered in northern MN

[barbender]

  Emerald Ash Borer made a big jump from the central part of the state to about 25 miles from my place. Probably about a 150 mile jump, more than likely by someone bringing firewood up.

 This is more significant than the distance would indicate, because the area that was infested previously is more farm country and mixed prairie, where ash is a component of mixed hardwood forests. However, up north we have large tracts of  black ash, or mixed black and green ash, that grow in pure stands in wet areas. I expect now that the bug is here, it will really take off unfortunately. 

Emerald Ash Borer Found in Cass County | Minnesota Department of Agriculture

[Ron Scott]

Yes, most likely hitchhiking on firewood.

[barbender]

I see people pulling 5th wheel campers headed north, with a "hitch hauler" on the back with a big pile of firewood on it, all the time. Not hard to see how it happened.

[Andries]

We're 500 km North of you BB.
We've had the EAB for a year or two as well. It hasn't taken over the woods too bad, even to the East of us, in NW Ontario.
I see many highway signs, aimed at tourists, about not transporting firewood. A lot of those Winnebagos with the receiver hitch carry-alls loaded with bundle wood, doing it anyway.
However, what about all the trucks carrying logs? 
We may be tempted to, but we shouldn't blame the eab on all the Forumites taking trips to Alaska. 😉

[barbender]

 Andries, every time a Forumite stops at my place on their way up the Al-Can, I'm going to load them up with a big pile of EAB infested Ash and see if they make it across the border on the way to see you😁

 Seriously, I'm not sure how the logistics of this quarantine will shake out. I know one mill, a pallet operation that uses a lot of Ash, is reconfiguring their wood yard so that they can have the "bug wood" piled with the necessary distance from everything else. But yeah, how do you know that you don't drop a few bugs on the 50 mile haul to the mill?

 Maybe it will be something where you can only move it when the bugs aren't considered active (Oct 1st through the end of March maybe?).

 I'm not even sure how this will affect my bundled firewood operation. In MN, currently we can sell locally harvested firewood for use in MN DNR administered lands, in the county where it is harvested. There can't be any Ash in it.

 So Itasca County wood can be sold in Itasca County, Cass County wood in Cass County. Well now EAB is in Cass County, with a quarantine in the part of the county where it was found. Will they want me to use wood from somewhere else? Time will tell.

[beenthere]

The mode of operandi since back in maybe 2005 has been "Don't Move Firewood". And to this date, don't see that it has had much, if any, affect on the movement or spread of the EAB.
Whether it is just a knee-jerk reaction that the "gov't" has taken to show they tried to do something, or that no one pays a bit of attention to it, or it is not possible to monitor, or moving firewood just isn't spreading the EAB disease??
Quite impossible to tell just what is happening.
No one knows the answer.

Also, in Wisconsin, before the EAB showed up here, we had serious plans by County-level planners to go into affect at the first sight of any loss of Ash trees. Quarantine the area, restrict movement of ash, blah, blah, blah.
But I'm pretty sure most people know that the first signs are usually seeing dead or dying ash. Very likely the ash were bitten by the borers years before they finally girdled the ash trees by eating the cambium layer completely around and up the trees under the bark. Some of the first visual signs have been the sloughing of bark and then the leaves turning brown.  Several years too late to shut the barn door, so to speak.

[Southside]

Having been through it here I would start cutting all the Ash I could, it won't be there in 5 years is my experience. 

[barbender]

 The DNR has been trying to sell as much Ash as they can the last 5 years, knowing the writing is on the wall. They were trying to thin ash stands, with he hope that other species would come in (and planting them in some cases) and get established before the ash dies. Up here, where ash grows, not a lot of other tree species will and they project that when the ash dies, many areas will go to cattails.

 Beenthere, I'm sure you're spot on. Once someone recognized an infestation, it had probably been in those trees for a couple of years. And yeah, once a pest like this is on the landscape...if your prevention protocol hinges on the lowest common denominator of one ignorant person hauling a hitch load of buggy wood up north, you've already lost the battle, IMO. But you know the government, they are always great at doing SOMETHING. Especially if it doesn't do anything🤷

 

[stavebuyer]

We had all the various "quarantine" protocols here. From the time the bug was first noted until it was more or less statewide was only a few years. Spread along the major highways and rivers was the fastest. Don't see where the rules had any meaningful effect in slowing the bug from the original quarantine counties to statewide distribution. Evidently the bugs didn't care much about county lines. The bugs moved faster than the government recognized and could add newly infected counties to the quarantine area. 

[SwampDonkey]

Lucky so far in my area. It has been detected in New Brunswick since about 2019 I believe. I don't have pure stands around here. Mine is mixed with maple and softwoods. All seems well so far, but one never knows when they are toast. That quarantine stuff is basically on the honor system. Never heard tell of anyone going to jail over a bug killed tree or camp firewood for that matter. I have a different philosophy over harvesting ash. I want to leave the best that I have and take out the garbage. We had the same philosophy when people cried budworm is coming. Still have all kinds of mature fir. And now you have people taking photos of over mature, very suppressed fir dying and calling it climate. : If you don't thin fir, all you get is trash fir. And it does not have a long life to begin with. Don't waste time on fir that was over topped for 50 years, more garbage. And fir on wet ground is some more trash. This kind of stuff is budworm attractant. 

[WhitePineJunky]

Lucky so far in my area. It has been detected in New Brunswick since about 2019 I believe. I don't have pure stands around here. Mine is mixed with maple and softwoods. All seems well so far, but one never knows when they are toast. That quarantine stuff is basically on the honor system. Never heard tell of anyone going to jail over a bug killed tree or camp firewood for that matter. I have a different philosophy over harvesting ash. I want to leave the best that I have and take out the garbage. We had the same philosophy when people cried budworm is coming. Still have all kinds of mature fir. And now you have people taking photos of over mature, very suppressed fir dying and calling it climate. : If you don't thin fir, all you get is trash fir. And it does not have a long life to begin with. Don't waste time on fir that was over topped for 50 years, more garbage. And fir on wet ground is some more trash. This kind of stuff is budworm attractant.

Seems to be a very fine window with balsam to manage it before it goes to hell. 
No ash stands around here but north a bit. I planted some
Black ash here this summer 

[KEC]

I know next to nothing about the life cycle of the EAB, but many insects will go through a period where the flying adults will go quite high above the earth and travel long distances with the wind. To get an idea what we're up against trying to control invasives,  a few years back people were talking about pulling Garlic Mustard plants to control them. I was driving trucks and made trips from Syracuse, NY to Rochester to Elmira and back to Syracuse. I also made 10 trips from Syracuse to Woonsocket, RI and back. There was Garlic Mustard growing along the roads nearly everywhere I looked. If you could recruit every able-bodied man, woman and child to go out and attack that plant you would not get it all and in a few years it would be back. I think control efforts, at best, delay the inevitable.

[beenthere]

KEC
You could spot that white flower driving along the road?

[KEC]

Not that hard when it is in blossum.

[SwampDonkey]

It's the same with cow parsnip, which is poisonous. Where did that come from? Also bedstraw that invades fields, we have a native kind, but this is far more aggressive stuff. It smothered everything even spruce seedlings. I never saw any of it years ago. A lot comes from lax agricultural practices. Years ago you couldn't sell grain for milling or seed if your field is weedy. Now I see planted fields full of weeds, especially on small hobby farms. Weed seeds will also follow potatoes, it's either in the dirt on the skins or in the dirt or mudballs within the mix. Unless the spuds are washed, weed seeds are hitching a ride.

[Al_Smith]

I've got plenty of live ash trees in my woods .However they are about 4 feet high and 1 inch in diameter .Give them another 100 years might be 100 footers once again .