Thousands of trees removed as City struggles with another invasive pest

BramptonGuardian.com
June 26, 2014
Chris Clay

About 7,500 trees have been cut down and destroyed as the City of Mississauga works to stop the spread of an invasive pest that could wipe out about half of the city’s two million trees.

Gavin Longmuir, the City’s manager of forestry, was at General Committee yesterday to pass along the gloomy news about all the trees that had to be removed due to an infestation of the Asian Long-horned Beetle. Several thousand of them were from Wildwood Park.

The beetle, said Longmuir, attacks and ultimately kills healthy, deciduous trees such as maple, willow, birch and poplar. These species comprise about a half of the two million trees that make up Mississauga’s canopy and they would be absolutely devastated if the beetle was able to spread beyond the Malton area where it was found last year.

Longmuir showed a number of striking photos to councillors to depict just how much damage the insects had caused. Areas that had been rife with foliage looked stripped and barren after municipal crews had to come in and basically clear cut the trees that were dead or dying.

The pictures drew unhappy murmurs from councillors when they saw them.

To help control the pest and stop it from spreading across Mississauga and the neighbouring municipalities of Toronto and Brampton, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency put in place a quarantine zone. The CFIA placed restrictions on moving trees, plants and wood outside of the 20-square-kilometre zone, which is bordered in the north by Finch Ave. W., in the east by Martin Grove Rd., in the south by Hwy. 401 and in the west by Dixie Rd.

Longmuir said the zone will remain in place until at least 2018 and surveys will be conducted throughout that period to determine if the eradication efforts are being successful.

This fall, the City will start replanting trees in Wildwood Park. However, they can’t plant any of the species the beetle feeds on and they won’t be planting ash trees, which are being targeted by the invasive emerald ash borer, Longmuir said.

“It was a particularly bad 12 months for Mississauga’s tree canopy with the beetle, the ice storm, the flooding (last July) and the emerald ash borer,” said Ward 5 Councillor Bonnie Crombie.

The City has spent about $370,000 dealing with the beetle and those costs are being reimbursed by the CFIA. Meanwhile, previous eradication programs in Toronto and Vaughan saw compensation for lost trees from the Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food and City officials are hopeful their costs would also be eligible.