BOULDER, Colo. — The State Agriculture Department held a show-and-tell in Boulder for foresters from 11 Front Range cities Tuesday, letting them dig for and see larvae in ash trees, which will turn into the Emerald Ash Borer.
“We have invited those who work with trees in to see what the insects look like and why this could be very dangerous for cities,” said John Kaltenbach with the State Agriculture Department.
“Our hope is to complete a visual assessment of all public and private ash trees within a half mile of the first dead ash found, which was infested with the EAB. We are letting these tree protectors get a show-and-tell lesson on how to identify infected trees.”
If infected, there will be large branch “die-back” in the tree crown, woodpecker damage and excessive sprouting.
While difficult to identify in early stages, the state is using protocols developed by the Canadian Forest Service which allows for random branch sampling in mile grids around where the first infected tree was found.
From the survey, the state will come up with plans – they are already putting a ban on taking any ash wood produce, firewood or mulch out of the county—which will develop a management plan for dealing with the infestation response to stave off further spreading of the EAB.
While they think the EAB wound up in Colorado as a result of millions of dead ash trees in the Midwest being turned into firewood and shipped to the state, they hope to stop the spread by isolating the trees infected now.
There are about 38,000 city park and private trees in Boulder. Experts estimate 6,000 are ash. Ironically ash trees were planted when Dutch Elm disease killed off elm trees in the 70s, and now these wonderful shade trees are fighting off the EAB bug, as foresters try to prevent them from spreading.