Released August 8, 2008
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - With the sighting of a destructive insect pest in Missouri, about 50 miles north of Corning, Arkansas forestry officials are keeping an eye out for the emerald ash borer.
"As its name implies, the borer targets ash trees," said Tamara Walkingstick, a extension forester and professor with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. "Borer larvae feed under the bark of trees, cutting the flow of water and nutrients.
"It takes only two to four years for the infested tree to die," she said. "Even healthy trees can be afflicted."
Currently there is a federal quarantine regulating movement of ash trees, lumber and firewood outside infested states, said Paul Shell, plant inspector and quarantine manager for the Arkansas State Plant Board. Shell said his agency is working with the state parks, the Army Corps of Engineers and state Game and Fish Commission to help alert people to the borers’ probable mode of transport: Firewood brought by campers.
"If people are coming in from far away and may be staying for a week or two, they might be more likely to bring their own firewood," he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is conducting extensive trapping this summer, Shell said. In addition to forestland, USDA is setting up traps at nurseries and lumber mills.
Using just one type of tree for urban and suburban ornamentals may have contributed to the borers’ fast progress.
"The problem in Michigan is they had a lot of elm trees with Dutch elm disease and a lot of towns went back and planted ash trees," Shell said. "A new bug shows up and has all these ash trees with no natural environmental pests or diseases to prey on this new bug. It can go crazy."
Entomologists say the borer, a native of Asia, was first spotted in Michigan in 2002 and probably arrived years earlier in crates, pallets or other shipping materials. The borer is now found in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Missouri.
The adult form, a beetle, has a dark metallic green back and bright, emerald green underside. It is bullet-shaped and about a half-inch long. The larvae are white and flat with bell-shaped segments and can grow to about 1.25 inches.
For more information about the emerald ash borer, see http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-7066.pdf.
--30--
http://www.uaex.edu/news/august2008/0808ashborer.htm
Contact: Lamar James, (501) 671-2187, ljames@uaex.edu
