Emerald Ash Borer: The Difference 1 Year Can Make

Scott Gardner, district manager of Davey's Burnaby office, talks about the devastating emerald ash borer infestation among the surrounding Vancouver area and how different it is one year later, as well as the predictions and precautions being taken to tackle the situation. 

In this episode we cover: 

• Emerald ash borer spread in the metro Vancouver area (00:45)
• How serious is the infestation? (2:52)
• EAB in the eastern U.S. (5:30)
• What's the plan to stop the spread in the metro Vancouver area? (6:01)
  • Injections (6:05)
  • Tree removal (7:05)
• Neonicotinoid insecticides ban? (7:44)
• EAB infestation in the lower mainland (9:45)
• How does the climate affect ash trees' longevity? (11:03)
• Physical damage from EAB (12:49)
• What will happen over the next 12 months? (13:24)
  • Containment (13:32)
  • Removal (14:00)
• How does EAB treatment work? (15:26)
• Percentage of trees being treated (16:21)
• Removal is cheaper while the tree can still be climbed (17:40)
• EAB media coverage (18:13) (20:04)
• What can be done to mitigate damage? (19:32)
• What good news can we expect this time next year? (21:15)
• What's the hope for stopping the infestation? (23:50)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To hear Scott's EAB podcast episode from one year ago, listen here, How Emerald Ash Borer is Making its Way Out West.

To read our emerald ash borer blogs to stay updated on their patterns and signs of damage, visit Blog.Davey.com by clicking here, EAB Davey Tree blogs.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm joined again this week by Scott Gardner. He's a District Manager in the Burnaby, British Columbia, Canadian office of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Scott, we talked almost exactly a year ago, and at that point, emerald ash borer, I think, was surrounding you, but things have changed in 12 months, haven't they?

Scott Gardner: Yes, they have. Thanks for having me on. With this, we started with the emerald ash borer being in Vancouver. There was one or two trees. It was thought that maybe we got lucky and we caught it early, we can contain it. Then, through inspection, it was found that it was at eight other sites in the city of Vancouver. They moved to the next city, Burnaby, and I think they did a few hundred trees there where they did branch sampling.

Unfortunately, on the very last tree, on the very last branch, they found signs in Burnaby. It was just, okay, it's spread a little bit. We're not quite sure where to go from here, but a few weeks back, we got reached out to by the city of Surrey that they had some suspicious ash trees. Further investigation was found, and there is a huge outbreak there.

There is a few neighborhoods that have completely bark peeling off dead trees. It still has foliage in the canopy. The result of the borer is just hitting them now. These are trees that the city had inspectors looking at within the last few months because of development that's been going on there. It went from zero to super far gone in a matter of one year. With it, hopefully, there's a little bit more appreciation for the fact that it's here and actions need to be taken, or we'll be forced to make the actions once the trees are all dead.

Doug: Here in the East, I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I've seen this. I've seen what you're going through. I thought you were ready. I thought that everybody was warned. We didn't really know. It was just so quick and so devastating, but even though you knew it was coming, it looks like it's the same sort of infestation that we saw in the East.

Scott: I think the thought with it is that there's a small infestation in the upper canopy. It slowly declines, and then the tree starts to sucker out, and then it slowly crumbles, and that's what causes it. With the trees that I was looking at in Surrey, there is such a large infestation, that the galleries of the EAB serpentining have gone over top of each other to the point that the bark on the main trunk is literally peeled off and falling off. You can't see the serpentines anymore because it's so infested. When you look on the outside of the bark, you're not seeing exit holes.

There are so many larvae in there, that they're destroying the bark before they're able to get to full maturity because the infestation is so large so quickly. This is where, I think, it comes out of the blue where people think that there's time to make decisions or do other things. It's a matter of as soon as you're starting to see decline, we still have foliage in the upper canopy, and not just suckers. The foliage is still up there. It's starting to decline now, but with it, when I was exposed to EAB in the early 2000s, it had already been here for a while when I got into the industry. I was only seeing dead ash trees everywhere.

To see live ash trees get hit with this, even knowing what is about to happen, it's still a shock to me. It's terrifying.

Doug: It is shocking and terrifying. Back here in the East, the only thing left are saplings that are resprouting, and we don't know what's going to happen. We have no idea. Will the EAB go through again? Is it still here? Could it be, or did it move on? Basically, we have no large ash trees left. Maybe one or two here and there, but other than that, nothing. For you, terrifying, definitely, but what's the plan? What can be done?

Scott: With it, you can do the injections. One of the limitations in the lower mainland is there's a huge aversion to neonicotinoids. IMA-jet, which is less expensive, more effective control, is banned. We're stuck with Ecojet's triazine, which is exponentially more expensive as a treatment method. That being said, you can only use it if the tree hasn't started to decline.

As a control method, it attacks the larva while they're feeding, so there is still going to be damage. Even in doing the treatments, it's minimizing it, but to actually keep the trees alive, you have to be doing the treatment indefinitely. I think the management side of this is any declining tree in any capacity needs to be removed and starting to lay out a plan for timelines for removals with regards to risk. Most of these trees are trees that are overhanging roads and there's a lot of targets around them because these were thought to be the best trees for municipal sites. They're very resilient. They grow quickly. They create a nice canopy. Now, the canopy that was protecting everybody with some nice shade is now threatening everybody with dead limbs that are falling all over the place.

Doug: Are you hearing any talk about unbanning the neonic version?

Scott: No. With this, the cities are pretty much headstrong into the issues. With the neonicotinoids, they're looking at it from the perspective of this could really hurt our pollinators. The rules that were put in did not leave any exemptions for situations like this. I haven't heard much on that side. I think one of the problems that we're seeing in the lower mainland of British Columbia is there are multiple little cities that are through here. None of them in and of themselves have a large population of ash.

Over the whole area, there's probably 200,000 trees, but in each city, there's 10,000 here, 9,000, 7,000, 4,000. For each one of them, they see it as such a minimal percentage that they don't feel like action is required yet, or they're slowly gauging what action they're wanting to take. It's going to be interesting. I think we're working on consulting with as many of the municipalities as possible to educate them on what they need to know, what options they have available.

I know the city arborist for Surrey, it looked like he was in complete shock when they were doing a tour of the trees because for him, it wasn't part of his budget to deal with this. It wasn't in the game plan to have to address the impending doom that's laid out here. Now, he's got to rethink the whole plan with regards to how he's going to manage it.

Doug: Why did they not think that this would happen in that city? Why did they think that they would be immune from this? Were we seeing this insect moving in that direction, or all of a sudden, he's in shock, and it's like, they're here.

Scott: I know we have the Japanese beetle. There's been some restrictions in the city of Vancouver where some Japanese beetle were found. It was contained. It wasn't the problem. We've had multiple pests that have come through. Hemlock looper moth did devastate Stanley Park with the hemlocks killing a bunch of those, but it didn't kill every hemlock. It was heat stress along with that killed it.

Trees tend to be fairly healthy in the Lower Mainland. We have a tropical climate, and trees tend to just grow through everything. I feel like there's a general sense that our trees will bounce back from anything. The fact that this is a straight-up killer is something that the Lower Mainland hasn't seen before.

Doug: Do you think because your climate is different than the climate in the East that these trees will be able to, in some way, bounce back?

Scott: [laughs] I almost drank the Kool-Aid. When it was only found in Vancouver, and they weren't finding it anywhere else, I know what they chose for action has always been, are we going to do this? Are we going to do that? With it, I was hoping that it was an isolated incident. We caught it early. We're able to maybe go maybe a few miles in each direction and deal with the trees in those areas, and see how we move from there. Then, when there was one bug in Burnaby, I was like, "Okay, it's not spreading exponentially. One over there that you can hardly tell. Maybe it is kind of slow." But with the Burnaby one, that was probably 10 kilometers.

Surrey is 16 kilometers from Vancouver. All of the literature, all of the documentation says it can spread 16 miles in a year. We're in an urban center, so we think, no, that doesn't count for us, but that's pretty much to the pinpoint where the next outbreak was found. Now, with the weather, with everything that's going here, I don't think our climate will actually create any protection for the trees. We have a bunch of microclimates and other things. There might be a couple outlier trees that happen to have something. but for the most part, this is just a straight-up killer.

The damage that the ash borer does is mechanical. Yes, it's a biological pest, but it's a physical damage that kills the tree, not the bug moving around in it. That physical damage, so long as they're present and they grow in the exponential way that they do, I don't think that any ash that is a host species stands a chance.

Doug: If you're 16 miles from Surrey, what are you doing for this next 12-month period?

Scott: I don't think there's anything you can do. You could try starting to treat. You can remove ash from your planting lists, but really, even if you inject your trees with it, you're still susceptible to it. At this point, I think I would even consider starting to remove your ash trees. Because it's not a question of, unless you plan on injecting your trees indefinitely, which most municipalities, when you look at the cost-benefit, to inject all of your ash trees, it's not very feasible from an economic perspective. I would say 16 miles from Surrey, I would start removing my trees. Anything with a decline, any high-target ones, start putting it into my budget and starting to work on it, because that is the inevitable fact of what's going to happen. Because the containment, that's out the window. That's long gone, long gone at this point.

Doug: Think about our talk a year ago when you and I discussed this. Were you wearing rose-colored glasses?

Scott: [laughs] I don't know. I'll have to look back at that. I knew that it was bad, but I don't think so. I'll have to check. [laughs]

Doug: I think you were pretty worried, but there was some of that, what you're talking about like, we just don't think it's going to affect us in the same way that it did as it worked its way west. In the type of treatment you're using, does the EAB have to ingest it to kill the beetle? Is that how it works? How does the treatment that you're using work against the pest?

Scott: The treatment that we use, we inject it in the trunk. It goes up into the cambium layer. While the EAB is in its larval state and it's serpentining and eating the cambium, the chemical in there will make it so the larva isn't able to transform into the adult. As a result, it doesn't progress, and it stops at that stage. With it, there is still damage that happens to the tree with the pesticide, but it suppresses the regrowth for the next generation.

Doug: What percentage of trees are getting that treatment? As you said, the only way you're going to keep that tree alive is just keep treating it.

Scott: With it here, nobody's actually started doing the treatments yet. There are some RFQs out with a few of the cities.

Doug: What's RFQ?

Scott: Request for quotation. They are starting that program. I don't have the data in front of me, but I would say probably less than 5% of trees in the East were actually treated, from my knowledge. Just because it's more of a tool that you can treat a tree to slow the progress, to save yourself the cost on the removals. As a management tool, it can be used, but it's a band-aid when you think about it.

When you think of the removal costs, the removal costs are excessive. You're having to cut down full trees. They're hazardous and problematic, so they have to be done. The treatment is a minor cost in comparison to all of the removals that are going to be happening.

Doug: It's going to be cheaper to remove a tree while you can still climb it, right?

Scott: Yes. At the three to five-year mark is when it gets to a point that it's declined so far that you no longer can climb it. Most of the trees are boulevard trees, so we can get bucket trucks right beside them. Those aren't very problematic. When you have backyard ones or ones in green spaces, that's where you have to come in with a spider lift or other options to get it down because it's too unsafe to climb them.

Doug: Is there news coverage? Do people know about this? If you do have a big ash tree in your backyard, do you know not to wait five years if you start to see decline?

Scott: With it, there was some news coverage. There hasn't been recently. What I would say is on July 7th, the Canadian Food Agency expanded the area that was listed, so the area has expanded from then. The notice has just been posted. That was yesterday because we're doing this on the 8th. With it, this is just happening right now. I think the same thing as our interview last year, people aren't really screaming and running for the hills yet. With it, I'm doing everything I can to try to educate as many people as I can because the last thing I want is for people to be chaining themselves to dead ash trees as we're removing them, when we're doing it for safety reasons because the trees are completely dead.

If people really do want to do something properly, they should be really protesting to inject those trees right away as quickly as possible and keep them on a program because that will keep them alive. If you're looking for something to do, that's what you can do. Once we get to the point that they're declining, forget about it.

Doug: This is so frustrating looking at this from my perspective of already seeing this happen because when I look at media coverage for something like this, we didn't get much media coverage about emerald ash borer here. People didn't know the severity of what was going to happen. We had no idea what was going to happen. We had another pest come through, though, that's still here called spotted lanternfly, which doesn't do much damage, but they're everywhere and you can see them. The media coverage was crazy because they'll be up in your maple tree, they'll be producing honeydew, and you know what that means. It means your car and your deck are all sticky, and so media coverage went crazy. What do we do about spotted lanternfly?

Where in the case of this is a devastating infestation that everybody should know about, especially if you're not a municipality. If you're a person that has five ash trees in their backyard, treasured ash trees in their backyard, you better know what's coming because it's coming. I want your opinion on what am I going to find from you when I talk to you next year? What will you think you'll be telling me?

Scott: I think next year, given that this has expanded, given that the cities are starting to get on board and get a little bit more direction on how to deal with it, also, the fact that the restricted areas are expanding, that's going to give us a lot more space to process the debris, move the debris around, have proper disposal in place, and actually try to treat.

I think that you'll probably hear that we've taken on a few projects to inject large areas. What I would love to see is some quarantine zones where we actually do some removals around infected trees to try to maybe set up some barriers and some walls to keeping the spread. With it, I would like to be able to tell you that there's actually some containment. That's what I would like to tell you because the ash trees in the Lower Mainland, I feel like they're gone. What I would like to see is it contained to this area and not make it into the mountains.

If it makes it into Kelowna, Kamloops, the mountains, then it's a hop, skip, and then they jump away from Alberta. If it makes it to Alberta, that will be devastating. Calgary and Edmonton have millions of ash trees. In each of the cities, they've planted millions of them because they are resilient, they work in the climate, they are using them in shelter belts throughout the entire province. If it makes it to Alberta, the damage will be catastrophic.

Here, we have a small population of ash trees. Though it's going to be difficult to manage, it's not going to be devastating to our landscape. In Alberta, it will be devastating. Keeping it contained here is what I'd like to be able to tell you we've done.

Doug: There's been no stopping it. How is it going to change? How could you possibly stop it if everybody from the East has seen it coming and it's there, how do you think you'll be able to stop it? I know you want to be able to stop it, but there's been no stopping it.

Scott: I would say removing all ash trees would be the way to do it. Just take them all out.

Doug: Preemptively?

Scott: Preemptively. Like a firewall, clearing it all out, an extended ways out could be it. With it, I think that we saw emergence of EAB in Portland first. It looks like this is coming from the south upwards is my theory on it, especially where the outbreak in Vancouver was. It's right in a hub where a lot of transport trucks are constantly coming and going. I don't think it was freight. There's the downtown core, and then there's the shipping. They're very close together, but it was closer to where a lot of the transport trucks come in and do a lot of events in the downtown. With it could have been from any one of those sources that it came from.

Personally, I think all of the flow of traffic up and down along the Pacific Northwest is something that funneled it up here. Within the states, you see a lot of EAB through the Eastern side of the country. Through the center, you don't see much emergence and much spread. The fact that it jumped to Portland was a huge jump, but between the mountains and the prairies, there haven't been much expansion. I can hope, but I won't be shocked if it makes it there. That's what I would say.

Doug: Scott, I'm going to leave it right there. I am very interested to talk to you in the future, maybe before a year again, that we can talk to see what's going on there. Please keep us informed on what's happening on your side because we're interested to see what's happening there. All we can say is we wish you the best of luck. Thanks also for spreading the word and trying to stop this. Infestation.

Scott: You got it. Thank you.

Doug: Our best wishes go out to the tree lovers of Western Canada, that's for sure. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to this podcast, so you'll never miss a show.

Do you have a question for an arborist? We could use a couple more because I'm going to be doing a show featuring your questions. There's a couple of different ways you can send them to us. Send an email to podcasts@davey.com, that's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@ D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your questions could be on a future episode , and we'd love to hear from you.

As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:27:03] [END OF AUDIO]