Ash borer wiping out Kentucky trees

• Dead and dying trees threaten power lines%2C personal property%2C public safety
• Louisville%27s management plan only covers Metro Parks.
• There%27s no plan for managing the borer%27s impact on thousands of trees growing next to Louisville streets
• Property owners who don%27t treat their ash trees will lose them and treatment will likely have to continue indefinitely.

Five years after the emerald ash borer arrived in Kentucky from the north where it killed more than 25 million trees, the full force of this Asian invader is being felt across the Bluegrass.

From Lexington to Louisville and north to Cincinnati, ash trees are being wiped out from rural landscapes, parks, leafy subdivisions and urban corridors.

Dead tree tops and whole dead trees are visible from the westbound lanes of Interstate-64, and in pockets of destruction throughout northern Kentucky, including Franklin, Shelby, Oldham and Jefferson counties.

"For some areas of the state, we are beginning a peak decline," said Jody Thompson, ecologist and forest health specialist with the Kentucky Division of Forestry. "We really are at a point where we are crossing a threshold, where ash trees in these infested areas are starting to reach their peak decline, where it it is going to be most noticeable."

Experts like Thompson and Chris Chandler— a certified arborist and habitat restoration manager with a private consulting company — are worried about property damage and injuries from falling limbs or trees.

"People are going to get hurt," warned Chandler, who can count dozens of dead and dying trees in his Oldham County neighborhood. "We need education and outreach."

When Chandler and his wife Sadie Tamplin bought their dream home on a wooded lot this past winter, an army of destructive beetle larvae lay dormant, hidden under the bark of several tall ash trees on the property.

But with the warmth of spring, many of the trees' leaves failed to unfurl. The couple thinks all but one of their ash trees are doomed including a century-old ash with a 30-inch diameter trunk. The one they saved is being treated with chemicals.

"I inherited an ash problem that has cost $4,000 to mitigate," Chandler said.

Response criticized

The small shiny green beetles likely arrived in the United States hidden in wooden packing materials from Asia. They were first identified in 2002 in Michigan.

They were found in Southern Indiana's Floyd County in 2008. The next year, experts identified them in Jefferson County.

By 2012, the borer had begun to wreak havoc on Jefferson County's sizable ash population, and local tree advocates were calling on the city to mount a vigorous fight, with mixed results.

Estimates are that Jefferson County alone has 2.5 million ash trees, making up 10 to 17 percent of the county's tree canopy.

The Parklands of Floyds Fork is trying to save about 20 ash trees in a small ash grove along its distinctive Egg Lawn in Beckley Creek Park. Some dying trees in that grove will likely need to be removed this year because they are near a trail, said Scott Martin, parks director. In more natural areas, away from trails, ash will be allowed to die naturally, he said.

Metro Parks developed and is carrying out an ash borer management plan in city parks and along the tree-lined Olmsted parkways. Parks crews are treating about 150 of some 1,800 ash trees they surveyed, including some of the parks' best examples of ash trees, said Mesude Duyar Ozyurekoglu, Louisville Metro Parks landscape manager.

But she said parks expect to cut down as many as a few dozen dead or dying ash trees this year that threaten people or property — and more next year. "I see so many ash trees declining," she said. "Not only in the parks, I see it everywhere."

Other Louisville Metro officials have done little else to address the outbreak, as city officials have yet to follow key recommendations two years ago from a then newly established tree advisory commission. It called for an aggressive public education campaign and an inventory of the riskiest ash trees.

"You can't really do much if you don't know where they are," said Katy Schneider, co-chair of the tree commission.

In making its recommendations, the commission estimated there might tens of thousands of ash trees growing along Louisville streets in the public right-of-ways. All of them will die if they are not on a long-term treatment program, the commission concluded.

It estimated the cost of treatment to be about $200 every year or two, per trees, while the average cost of removing a mature ash tree was about $1,600.

By ordinance, maintenance of trees growing in right-of-ways is the responsibility of the property owner. But the city also has a duty to keep public right-of-ways safe, Schneider said.

"It's a big safety issue, and it's an issue that (most) homeowners are totally unaware of," she said. "The city is also going to have some liability there."

Erin Thompson, Louisville's urban forester, acknowledged there isn't any ash management plan yet for Louisville's street trees.

She said that "in a general idea, we know where (the ash trees) are," and that she is looking at developing a public education campaign to help the community deal with the problem. The ash borer, she said, is "definitely something I have on my mind."

But Schneider said even deciding on a message of a public education campaign has been difficult.

Louisville is working to increase its already depleted tree canopy, and "you hate to give a bad name to trees, that they are going to be an expense and a danger. That's a fine line there."

Protecting power lines

As the beetles have spread, typically through firewood, Kentucky officials have called a retreat of sorts. In April they ended wood quarantines in Kentucky counties, including Jefferson, saying the insect has overrun enough of the state that they became ineffective.

In all, an estimated 31 Kentucky counties are now infested, state officials said, with the greatest future decline likely to be in Grayson and Christian counties, along with counties surrounding Lake Cumberland.

"The damage is becoming more and more evident every day," said Joshua Browning, the owner of Browning Landscaping.

This year, he said, "I've done way more removal work than treatment, including removing hundreds of trees for local homeowners associations, including the Lake Forest Community Association."

Association General Manager Glenda Winchell said as many as 275 ash trees have beenremoved so far, opening up traffic islands and residential landscaping. Some residents are replacing the trees, she said.

The invasion has also made extra work for LG&E and KU Energy, said Liz Pratt, utility spokeswoman.

In the past year, she said utility crews have trimmed or cut down more than 5,000 ash trees that were attacked by the borer.

"We are looking at keep tree limbs and trees away from the lines," she said. "It's for safety and reliability."

University of Kentucky experts have been experimenting with biological control methods to curb emerald ash borer, such as introducing parasitic wasps.

"I'm quite optimistic," said Lynne Rieske-Kinney, professor of forest entomology at University of Kentucky.

But she acknowledged "the insects kill the trees so rapidly that it's difficult to develop management approaches."

Jody Thompson said people often ask him where they can get some of those wasps. But he said, "We're not at a point to say that they will work on the landscape level or as a commercially available tool. We hope they will."

He urged cities that haven't been preparing to start doing so. "They need to determine how much ash they have and start putting together a management plan for treatment or removal, or a combination of the two.

"Otherwise," he said, "it will be an enormous economic burden, and in many cases, these ash trees are already a hazard."

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.

Emerald ash borer

• Discovered in North America in 2002, after likely hitching a ride on cargo ships from Asia.

• During larval stage, borers feed under the bark of ash trees, destroying tissues that move water and nutrients.

• Tree death is within one to three years.

• Borer adults mate after emerging in the spring through D-shaped exit holes.

• Each female can lay up 90 eggs during their two- to three-week lifespan; eggs hatch in seven to 10 days.

• Healthy and vigorously growing trees with more than half their leaves may be saved with chemical treatment.

• Unhealthy trees with more than half of their leaves missing probably cannot be saved.

• Consult at least two certified arborists before making a decision.

• If the infested tree is in a public right-of-way, call MetroCall 311 and consult with the city arborist.

• Expect to treat ash trees indefinitely.

• Buy firewood where you burn it. Moving infested ash spreads the borers.

Sources: Kentucky Division of Forestry, Purdue University, Kentucky Office of the State Entomologist, www.emeraldashborer.info.