Emerald ash borer puts thousands of Wasaga Beach ash trees on chopping block

simcoe.com
April 7, 2016
By Ian Adams

Wasaga Beach could be looking at chopping down more than 5,400 ash trees over the next five years in an effort to control the damage caused by the emerald ash borer.

The bug, a wood-boring beetle native to eastern Asia, has killed millions of ash trees in North America since 2002.

The insect's larvae destroy the layer under an ash tree's bark that transports nutrients and water throughout the tree. The pest can typically kill a mature tree in one to three years.

Landon Black, with the firm Skelton, Brumwell & Associates, which has undertaken developing a management plan for Wasaga Beach on how to deal with the pest, outlined several options for the municipality in a presentation to the April 7 meeting of council’s coordinated committee,

That includes treating trees that could be considered “high-value” from a cultural or socio-economic perspective.

Black recommended the town take a “proactive management” approach, which would likely result in the removal of about 99 per cent of the town’s ash trees.

Phase one of the five-year plan would involve treating trees with an insecticide designed specifically to kill the emerald ash borer in the first year, with remaining trees removed over the next four years.

The plan would affect trees that are in public right-of-ways, or be in a position of endangering public safety.

Black said the plan would not include ash trees in woodlots.

The cost to remove the trees over five years would be $1.4 million.

Parks and facilities manager Gerry Reinders said the trees that will be saved have been identified, and there is money is this year’s budget to being treatment. The insecticide, TreeAzin, is derived from a plant native to the Indian subcontinent.

“It’s a huge cost,” Reinders told Simcoe.com. “The reason we’re putting out the strategy is to try and spread the costs out over a period of time.

“It’s not a huge amount (of trees), but there are a number that could be healthy enough and are at the right size that they could be treated,” he said.

Reinder said the cost to treat a tree works out to $5 a centimetre.

“A normal tree would cost about $200 to $300,” he said.

Reinders will be coming back to committee at a later date with recommendations on how to proceed with the strategy.

During the meeting, Mayor Brian Smith asked Black if the borer could jump to another species once ash trees were no longer available. Black said it was possible as the borer can be found in a variety of trees in Asia; however, he said, there was only once instance in North America of the bug being found in another tree species.

“So far in North America, ash is the predominant food source, but there is a real possibility that it could hop on to other species,” he said.