New York City Battles on Against Dutch Elm Disease

This was news to me that there was any battle to be had here.

I grew up in a part of suburban Chicago where all the residential streets were lined with elms -- it looked very much like the photo of Central Park in the article. I can remember the little papery elm seeds littered everywhere. Over the course of my childhood in the 1980s they all got Dutch elm disease and every last one was removed. The village arborist would come by and spray paint a big green dot on the trunk -- a mark of death -- and a week later it'd be gone.

By the time I was in high school, it looked very bare. Most of the elms were replaced with maples, which are only now starting to look reasonably substantial.

I built the Open Elm Project [1] back in 2011 to help mitigate the risk caused by lack of funding for professional surveys where I live.

Consists of a Django service with CouchDB as the data store and a couple of web-based iOS and Android apps.

Woefully neglected now since it was not really used. Uptake of mobile apps for this type of thing is difficult – especially in a population of 80k back in 2011/2012.

It looks like iriscouch.com is no longer live, as the data isn't loading on the map. Good thing I had it replicating to another server. :)

Source: https://github.com/andrewgleave/OpenElm

[1] http://www.openelm.org.im

Pedantry: The Nautilus article claims that the disease entered the US via a shipment of furniture. This is incorrect. Dutch elm disease came to the US in unprocessed logs. You only need to read the NYT article that is cited:

"The fungus that causes the disease -- Ophiostoma ulmi -- accidentally entered the United States in 1931 on elm logs shipped from France and headed for Cleveland."

These unprocessed logs were destined to be turned into veneer for furniture and cabinetry.

In speaking with a Dendrologist, today I learned that the primary factor here is the close proximity of "planted" elm trees.

Elm bark beetles don't travel far on their own, so in a typical forest environment, elm groves are protected, or buffered, by a variety of surrounding tree types, the distance between groves, and the natural order of things.

Whereas, in (sub)urban areas, elm trees are planted up and down residential streets, in close proximity, with no buffers in between.

There's no winning this one.

Related: the American Chestnut has also had a very hard battle. It's almost completely gone, but scientists struggle on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight

Mature American Elms are beautiful trees, especially over walkways like in Central Park. Hope they can sort this out.

Stupid question: could eradicating a disease like this one cause unpredicted side effects? Like driving some beetles to extinction causing other side effect? Or is it known that these diseases are purely nefast?

ps: anyone is subscribed to Nautilus? Their free articles are great. I wonder if the magazine as a whole is worth it.

It's sad to see the demise of grand old elm trees due to Dutch Elm disease as those trees take decades to reach maturity, can't be easily replaced, and their replacements are generally also susceptible to the disease. Oak wilt disease is having a similar effect on oak trees across the southeast US.