By Joe Zeleznik, Forester

NDSU Extension

I moved to North Dakota in September of 2002. During my last week in East Lansing, Michigan, I was having a drink with a colleague who’s a forest entomologist. She had been on a conference call all afternoon, where they were discussing a new insect that they had just identified in the Detroit area. They called it emerald ash borer (EAB).

My friend said, “It’s going to be a bad one.”

Here we are, 22 years later, and the insect has finally been confirmed in North Dakota in rural LaMoure County.

Last week’s find, nine miles north of Edgeley, shouldn’t come as a surprise. We always knew it would get here. We just didn’t know when or where it would arrive.

The find, in some respects, is a bit anti-climactic, at least for me. Along with colleagues from the North Dakota Forest Service and the North Dakota Department of Agriculture (NDDA), we’ve been doing a lot of education and outreach over the years. We’ve received dozens of calls and emails each year, asking us to check out trees that were suspected of being infested with the insect.

And every time we checked, there was no EAB to be found until last week.

After the discovery of EAB in Moorhead, Minnesota, in February 2023, we expected to find the insect in the Fargo area this year. Despite our best efforts, we still haven’t seen it in eastern North Dakota, and there are a lot of people looking for it.

How did it get to LaMoure County?

Our best guess is that the insect came in on firewood, or perhaps it hitchhiked a ride on somebody’s vehicle. But that’s just an educated guess. We don’t know for sure and we probably never will.

Regardless of how it arrived, it’s here. Our next step is to figure out how widespread it is in the local area. That’s this week’s job. And next week’s job. And the week after that, and the week after that, and so forth.

The initial find has been made and it will be the first of many.

I emailed my friend in East Lansing after the find was announced. She wished me luck and offered any help that we might need. I appreciate it.

I’m also grateful for the local experts in LaMoure County who are working that angle. The county NDSU Extension agent and the Soil Conservation District manager have been getting the word out and have fielded calls from concerned residents. Over the next few months, we’ll be doing more scouting and also holding educational workshops. There’s a lot to know about this pest. A few things to consider:

• EAB is deadly to ash trees – those in the genus Fraxinus. Mountain-ash trees are in the genus Sorbus and won’t be affected at all.
• Insecticide injections are highly effective against EAB, and one particular chemical has a two-to-three-year residual within the tree. Treatments next spring will more effective than those applied now, just a few weeks before autumn starts.
• On its own, EAB usually spreads to the next-closest ash tree, but can fly up to 10 miles. In infested firewood, EAB can move hundreds of miles. Please don’t move firewood.

If you think your ash tree might be infested with EAB, you can contact the NDDA through their Report A Pest website at: www.ndda.nd.gov/reab, or you can email them at ReportAPest@nd.gov. Please provide good pictures from a variety of angles, if you can. Of course, you can also contact your county NDSU Extension agent. These folks are great resources.

After 22 years of wondering and worrying, it’s finally here. To be honest, I was expecting to find it in 2015. I’m glad I was wrong.

NDSU Agriculture Communication – Aug. 28, 2024

Source: Joe Zeleznik, 701-321-8143, joseph.zeleznik@ndsu.edu

Editor: Kelli Anderson, 701-231-7006, kelli.c.anderson@ndsu.edu