The emerald ash borer is threatening a Native-American tradition (2019) | Hacker News Reader

The emerald ash borer is threatening a Native-American tradition (2019)

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54 pointsTomte25 comments

I bought a house in the northeast last winter with 2 huge ash trees in the backyard. Come early spring I noticed a woodpecker would go to town on them every morning. Closer inspection showed tons of tiny little holes throughout from Emerald Ash Borers and the trees had to come down to the tune of $7k. Bonus costs because the woodpecker returned in the fall and decided the next best thing to the now-missing trees was my house’s wood siding…

Turns out lots of new home buyers and realtors are bringing arborists along for home inspections because this is so common here (especially for winter purchase where you can’t tell if the tree has leaves). Will definitely do that next time!

Yeah, it is sad and an unintended consequence of a global economy. My girlfriend has 17 acres in upstate NY with 300+ ash. They are all slowly dying, losing their bark and blowing down in storms. Most are standing dead and don't even have much value as timber.

I live in southern Vermont and have a lot of dead ash trees. Interesting enough, while there is emerald ash borer 5 miles away from me, it hasn't made it to my property. I had a state forester who specializes in EAB come and take a look and found no evidence of it. Apparently around 2017 there was a drought that affected a lot of the ash trees near me and most have died from that. None of the trees had signs of flecking which is key and he took a look at the firewood and found no evidence. He said that if one ash tree has EAB, all ash trees around it will also be affected. And there are a few very healthy ash trees.

Maybe those genetics have an immunity? That's the case with beech trees where I live, they have a tough time but a few survived the plague that swept through them. I wonder how one could test if it's something special about the trees.

> I live in southern Vermont and have a lot of dead ash trees.

I'm also in Southern Vermont (Readsboro) and have mostly healthy ash trees. Emerald ash borer is presumed to be in the area, but no observed evidence yet right where I am. The foresters we spoke to told us that since it takes several years for trees to show symptoms, we should probably assume that our trees are already infested. We do have some trees that seem to be suffering from another ash disease which is present here: https://www.vtinvasives.org/invasive/ash-yellows.

It's probably worth noting that there are effective treatments if you have individual trees that you want to save. I've been doing a preventative treatment on the trees near with house for the last couple year with Dinotefuran (Safari). It can be applied on the bark (basal trunk spray) in late spring, after the leaves start coming out. It costs about $10 per medium sized tree per year if you do it yourself. It won't save a tree that has already been too damaged, but is believed effective if applied before major signs appear.

The sad thing too is that in many forests it’s hemlock that grows over fallen trees, paving the way for apex trees to follow behind them, and the hemlock is also under threat by the hemlock woolly adelgid. With elm and chestnut also gone, our list of allies grows thin.

I don’t know if tulip poplar is native to your area but that also used to be part of the apex canopy and we hardly even talk about them. Ridiculously massive trees. Normal trees don’t come up to the lowest branch on a mature tulip poplar.

Try putting lime around them and maybe you'll get morels.

Our yard has about a dozen trees and shortly after we moved in we hired an arborist to inspect them and advise us on how to keep them healthy. We ended up having to take down a dying ash that was leaning over our house and our neighbor's house. They also told us that one of our neighbors' ash trees is also on the way out, so we can plan ahead for shade for when they eventually take that down. The tree removal was relatively inexpensive compared to worrying about falling deadwood.

I live in North Eastern Maryland USA and two years ago I noticed bark laying symmetrically encircled around a tree. I asked around and an arborist informed me of our unfortunate situation to come which the State of Maryland had been trying to get in front of for years. After my property was visited by an State of Maryland arborist per their request I was informed I had to rectify this issue by felling my trees as soon as possible to prevent more spreading however my efforts were pointless since there are hundreds of infected Ash trees in and around me of which my neighbors have no idea nor any interest in their trees. Now in present time there are many hundreds of dead Ash trees around my area and the recent bomb cyclone wind we had caused those dead Ash trees branches to fall and some were widow makers for sure. I have proactively contacted my Home Owners Association, Town, County and State as it relates to these dead trees as the human threat impact is extremely high since some of these large trees are over property, yes homes, and those residents have zero knowledge about the threat these “fast dying” trees bring to them with each passing day. The invasive species are getting worse year over year as the price of globalization comes into clearer focus as years ago it was the brown marmorated stink bug yet in more recent years it has been the spotted lantern fly and now it is the emerald ash worm.

There is a pretty effective pesticide treatment that's injected into the tree every few years to the tune of a few hundred dollars. Much cheaper than cutting a large one down with the added benefit of getting to keep a mature tree.

It's really only viable for urban/suburban tree populations though, not a whole forest.

We lost a bunch of ash out of a small playground park near my house (Kitchener). They did the injections for a few years, but it seemed even at the time like it was more just putting off the inevitable. Or like, it was a way to do them in batches so we didn't lose all the shade in one fell swoop.

In any case, the replacements have been a mix of slower-growing native species, so that's at least positive— in 10-20 years there will be shade over the park again, and hopefully it being more diverse will make it a bit more robust to new species-specific bugs.

Unfortunately one was entirely dead by the time we moved in, and the other tree only had 5-10% of its leaves and was irreparably damaged. I don’t think the previous homeowners did a great job of identifying issues with and maintaining their yard.

I wonder what the actually net benefit analysis is of our fast international trade. How much money have we saved by buying cheap foreign stuff vs the massive damage from stuff like lanternflys, emerald ash borers, snake heads, and potentially giant hornets?

Due to the vast difference in wages, astonishing amounts of profit have been made from the super-exploitation of workers in poor countries.

Other arrangements are possible, but this is the tendency we see now with production motivated by profit.

On balance is your life really any better than it was in like 1950 in terms of economics? Probably not. Homes are no longer $5k for new construction. Cars are no longer $1k. Etc. We now pay exorbitant costs to achieve a standard of living that was once common for a factory worker with a high school diploma. Who really benefited here from globalization? Clearly it wasn't the average American but someone far higher up the food chain who was already living comfortably.

Well, 1950 was before civil rights era and during lynchyngs era, so quite a few Americans are in fact much better off. All of that had huge economic consequences.

Women were not allowed to make contracts or wills, which included ability to open bank accounts. They were not allowed in top universities either.

Internationally, it gets even more interesting. It was 5 years after WWII and people were still dealing with destruction and consequences.

I will admit that life is more nuance than my toy example and was expecting this comment when bringing up the 1950s (which I hoped to deflect with my 'in economic terms' but alas), but my point has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the dollar amount of house and life you could purchase with your wages. Quite literally it was a time where my family members came with no money at all, found work in manufacturing, and purchased housing. My central point is that the kind of work today that would employ someone with low skills no longer pays for things like a home.

But that is the thing ... the "economic consequences" meant that a lot of people could not buy those houses with earnings.

Pre-civil rights era meant lynching of succesfull people and unavailability of the jobs that allow to buy good place for massive amount of people.

I’m from one of those poor countries.

In case it wasn’t clear, I’m for ending the profit motive. I want us to produce for need instead.

>saved

You mean how much more stuff have we bought with the same amount of money.

In term of pure environmental impact I suspect environmental protection is easier to push for domestically when you can move the high impact but environmentally damaging industries to other countries.

Here are some of the baskets the guy mentioned in the article makes:

https://www.abbemuseum.org/attending-artists-profiles/gabrie...

Pretty cool looking. I've been trying to turn the shoots I get every winter from my apple tree into baskets since they look so nice and straight, shame to just toss. It's been a real struggle, just not an appropriate material for weaving.

I have a lot of sympathy for someone losing the basic material needed for their craft although fighting tree pests often seems like a losing battle.

The ash trees are all gone around us. Some 30-40% of all of the trees in our area (central Ohio) were wiped out within just 2-3 years. I'm not sure if we'll get saplings growing back now that the ash borer has wiped out its food source or not.

Traditional wooden baseball bats are made from ash. I'm guessing those will disappear soon too.

This is affecting a bunch of other stuff too like musical instruments, furniture, and baseball bats.

I have a few prized items made from Ash that are not going anywhere, because before long they will not be replaceable at any reasonable price. It is a very beautiful and durable wood so it's very sad what's happened.

Here in Michigan ive been cutting and burning 95% ash for the last 25-30 years because it is all dieing or now completely dead. Some woods are 50% ash trees and all dead.

Is it weird to contrast the indigenous things against the "western"? The natives in the Americas were the ones further to the west of the Europeans.

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