 All right, let's get started with our second talk. Emerald ash borer was found in Moorhead, Minnesota about a year ago. Tonight, let's get updated on its current status and be prepared for when this devastating insect pest is detected in North Dakota. And here to share his expertise with us is Dr. Joe Zalesnik. Joe has been with NDSU Extension since 2002 as our forestry specialist. He works throughout North Dakota and in the intersection of prairie and forest in Western Minnesota. Joe focuses on tree species diversity in communities as well as pest management and tree ring analysis. Joe, welcome to the forums. Okay, thank you for having me, Tom. Thank you for everybody for being here. Okay, give an update, as Tom said, Emerald ash borer was found a little over a year ago in Dilworth, Minnesota. Sorry, in Moorhead, Minnesota. These are the photos I got from the city forester on February 10th, 2023, as I was standing in line waiting for lunch. And I said, oh shoot. This is not what he found. He did not find any adults. He found a larvae. And usually what we see is the larvae. I've seen one Emerald ash borer adult in the last 21 years, and it was dead on my car up in Dilworth. So a year ago, I would have said this. EAB is here over in Moorhead, Minnesota. And specifically right there, right next to the golf course, and just down the street from the high school. And this was the neighborhood it was found in. So I'm gonna give you a little background here. And I kind of scratched my head at this. The city forestry crew was out pruning and they happened to prune the right branch from the right tree and they found it. And these two trees had Emerald ash borer in them. And could you identify these trees as being infested? I sure couldn't. It was really, really subtle. And these look at least like they had healthy crowns, at least as far as we could tell during the winter. So later that month, we found it over in Dilworth, Minnesota, about a mile away by the rail yard. And that's where things were at for most of the year. Later on, the question was, well, okay, we found it in these two little spots. How far has it spread? So in April, early April, there was a delimiting survey done by Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Moorhead Forestry. Their crew joined the folks from Minnesota Department of Ag. And then on our side of the river, the North Dakota Department of Ag, along with Fargo City Forestry, Extension, North Dakota Forest Service, and a few others, we did a delimiting survey on the Fargo side of the river. And here's what was found. One more tree in Moorhead, one more tree in Dilworth. And there were 27 suspect trees in Fargo. And following up on those suspect trees over the following month, City Forestry found nothing, nothing, in terms of Emerald ash borer. And so far, a year later, we still haven't found it in North Dakota. And it's kind of funny. You asked me for an update and thinking, well, you'd asked me about a month and a half ago, I would say, well, this talk will take about two minutes. There's nothing new. No, there's, but there is something new. But it still hasn't been found in North Dakota. Every City Forestry Department is looking for it. And a lot of the tree care workers, the folks who are just in the industry are looking for it. North Dakota Forest Service, North Dakota Department of Ag, they're looking for it. All of our extension folks all over the state are looking for it, and many others. And we still haven't found it. Okay, that's great. That's great. I'm not complaining, but I wanna point out, we're looking, we're looking. Okay, after that big Christmas ice storm, colleague and I went out around Eastern North Dakota. There were a lot of branches down. We stopped at the Oriska rest area where there was just damage upon damage, nothing. Went up to Lake Ashtabula, stopped in several of the campgrounds. No EAB, went over to Jamestown. City Forestry had a few trees he wanted us to look at. Couldn't find it. So that's the short answer is that there's no EAB in North Dakota, nothing new. But there is, there's a few things. Okay, a year ago in the Minnesota side of the river, where was EAB found in Minnesota? It was there. As of, well, today, there's a lot more places up in kind of North Central, or well, Central Minnesota, but further North. If you drew a line from Duluth all the way to Fargo, kind of a straight line there where we're finding it, or where it is being found. Okay, I'll use my laser pointer here. And I think it's just a matter of time before we will find it is just a matter of time before these start to fill in. So as of early 2024, yes, these yellow were the first two finds in Moorhead and Dilworth. And as of, well, a couple of weeks ago, this area in Southeast part of Dilworth and over by Minnesota State University Moorhead is where we found it on the east side of the river there. And that said, I'm just gonna show you a few trees over by MSUM, Minnesota State University Moorhead. This is kind of the classic example what you look for of the sprouts along the stem and go in a little closer. This is kind of the classic trees dying back. It's sending out these epicormic branches. And we think that is a sign of emerald ash borer, or excuse me, a symptom of emerald ash borer. And really it's a symptom of crown dieback, although this tree did have EAB. How about this tree? You think it's infested? It actually is. Okay, in the winter it's harder to tell because boy, that crown does look full. So we zoom in and you see the symptoms yet? How about there? Okay, that very specific woodpecker damage is what we're looking for. And it's really interesting. I'm still struggling with this one. I'm struggling with it because it's a very specific type of damage from the woodpeckers that helps us diagnose or identify which trees have EAB. It's in the upper third to half of the crown and we find roughly dime-sized holes that aren't very deep into the wood, just under the bark. And often it's on the south side of the tree. It was very interesting in Dilworth. There were some trees on either side of the street. The ones on the one side clearly infested. They had woodpecker damage. Other side of the street, no woodpecker damage. So we're scratching our heads at that one. But this is what we're looking for. If you see a tree that is from top to bottom, individual holes, it might not be EAB. We've got a lot of native ash bores. It might be, but it might not be. So over at MSUM, I stopped by there this morning on my way to work. And this is one of their dorms. And every one of those trees is marked with an X. It's not a yellow X. It's a nice orange or red X. They're all loaded with EAB, just loaded. And I tried to get some close-up photos, but the lighting wasn't very good. And these are all marked for removal. And this was just one little point on campus. I didn't really explore very much. So where it is over in Minnesota in Moorhead and Dilworth, it's expanding. And I think it'll be a matter of time before we find it on the North Dakota side of the river. Okay, so who's doing what? On the state level, the state of Minnesota, they put a quarantine or established quarantine around Clay County or not supposed to move firewood in and out or logs out of that quarantine area and nor brush or debris. And basically, where are people dumping their cut ash trees? Where are they supposed to? The compost site in Moorhead. And there's some advantages to that. They're also not trying to have people not move wood waste or not cut the trees during the EAB flight season, which is roughly Memorial Day till about the end of October. Okay. On the North Dakota side of the river, the North Dakota Department of Ag, if you go to this website, they have report a suspect ash tree, which is a nice little tool. And you can scan that code, that QR code, or click the link, report a suspect tree. And it goes to the survey form and you fill out a little survey. What's the date? What's your name? Where did you find it? And they'll send somebody out to check it out. And sometimes North Dakota Department of Ag, it'll be their personnel. Sometimes they'll ask extension to check up on it. Sometimes they'll ask North Dakota Forest Service, but somebody will follow up. And they haven't had a ton of requests yet, but every time they've looked, still haven't found the AB. Okay. We're off, we're still recommending, buy it where you burn it. Don't move firewood. There's a lot of people moving firewood and they're going to continue moving firewood, unfortunately, but we strongly recommend people don't move firewood because moving firewood is a great way to move this pest. And I really expect that's how it's gonna spread throughout much of North Dakota. That said, until we find it, we won't know who's moving it where. All right. That's at the state level. That's what the states are doing at individual city level. Okay. What are the cities doing? There's some combination of removals, replacements, and treatments. And I thought about this afterwards, thought this should really be a Venn diagram where things are overlapping. And like I said, some, there's some level of this. Okay. Removals can be very costly. You know, cutting down an ash tree in the woods, no big deal. It's just gonna drop in the forest and you don't need to worry about the other trees so much. You take down a tree like this. This one was on campus in front of buildings and where there's people around. That's gonna take a while. It's gonna be very costly. If you have an ash tree that's in a backyard or is big enough to be over your house, they might have to bring in a crane. And that could be very, very costly. And not sure, oh yeah, not sure why I had this one in here. That tree was finally down. That was an elm tree that they were moving on campus. I wanna point out that cutting down elm trees or letting elm trees die from, in this case, Dutch elm disease and letting them stand. Well, ecologically it's not the best because this is still providing habitat a little bit for the elm bark beetles, just for a little bit. The wood of elm trees doesn't break down the same way that the wood of ash trees break down. Okay, if this tree were to remain standing out being cut down, you'd lose the small branches then you'd start losing the medium branches, eventually you'd start losing the bigger branches. And it would just slowly decay and slowly break down and it wouldn't be a big deal all at once, probably, not for 10, 20 years, actually. An ash tree that is dead quickly gets very brittle. So we strongly recommend if you're gonna remove a tree, remove a live tree, don't wait till it dies. Because it's very dangerous at that point and tree care companies, tree removal companies are gonna charge a lot to remove a dead ash tree if they'll do it at all. So keep that in mind. Okay, so removals are often, hopefully, followed by replacements and only got three words to say to that, diversify, diversify, diversify. Trees are your investment. They are an investment, yeah, I know Todd said in 30 years he'll be in the old folks home and it won't matter to him, but it will matter to the next group of people that have their trees there, that are managing our urban forests and in our communities. So diversify, diversify, diversify. And then there are treatments, okay. Treatments, I've mentioned these before. There are three main chemical control measures. Amidacloprid and dinotefuran are a class, in a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids and they move throughout the tree very easily. They're pretty effective. I wanna say 70, 80% effective. Homeowners can use them, can apply them very easily. You do have to be careful with other plants near the trees you're treating because the amidacloprid you pour it into the soil and the tree takes it up. Well, tree roots are all over the place and you don't want to get this into the wrong tree where it may be taken up and then hit a pollinator, okay. Ash trees are wind pollinated. We're not so worried about pollinators getting hit by these chemicals from ash trees, okay. As I have here, there's a bunch of different products for each active ingredient. There's homeowner use, there are professional use only called restricted use pesticides and there's a lot of products may be available. There are more products than just these three, but these are the main three and I'm not endorsing any specific product, but that said, how much does it cost a tree to tree? It's really variable. Depends on if it's a homeowner product versus a professionally applied. Depends on the product itself and it depends on the size of the tree and we'll come back to that in a sec, all right. We do recommend no treatments until EAB is found within 15 miles of your location. Once treatments begin, you have to repeat them every year or two or three and that's until EAB is nearby you could be spending a lot of money for nothing, okay. There's at least seven contractors in the FM area offering treatments, there's at least one in Grand Forks and I know there are several others who have talked about getting into this business. It's very interesting, my colleague John Paul down in South Dakota, he said to the tree care people he said, if you're not in this in the first year or two, you're just gonna be too much competition if you try to get into offering treatments in year three or four, you're not gonna get the business. That was interesting. I do wanna point out this Emma Mectin Benzoate chemical, it is very, very effective, 99 plus percent. Okay, it is stem injection only. Now that said, it's kind of weird because I believe it's the Mectinite product homeowners can buy. It's a lower concentration, it's a lower concentration like half the concentration of the other products so you apply twice as much. Okay, it's really pretty straightforward. Because of that lower concentration though, homeowners can buy it, but do you have the specialized injection equipment? Okay, that's the question. What the professionals are charging is about six to $10 per inch of diameter. You measure the stem diameter at breast height, that's four and a half feet off the ground and they'll charge anywhere from six to $10 per inch of diameter. You'll notice here, it says two to three years. The research shows clearly a two year residual for the chemical without a doubt. No need to apply it every year. A lot of the folks, even within the industry, the wholesalers are saying, you know, around here you could probably go with every three years, not every two years, but every three years, for two reasons. One is, oh, the research does show that sometimes you do get a little bit of residual into that third year, so that's a good thing. But the other thing is that the thought, and I think that's probably true, is that an ash tree can handle one year of an EAB attack. It's really not gonna be that bad that the tree can fight it off. So applying every three years seems to be about the going plan right now. But if you wanted to, you could certainly apply every two years, nothing wrong with that. All right, the specialized equipment, they're all variations on the same thing. They are some type of pressurized pump, some type of connector to the tree itself and the tubing to connect all the system together. Hole gets drilled in the tree, actually, a bunch of holes, about three to four inches apart. Sometimes there are plugs applied, sometimes there are not, depends on the system you have. And they're attached through the tubing to some type of pressurized system. And it's very interesting sometimes that pressurized system is actually pressurized with a bicycle pump. Very interesting, okay. And I'm not sure why I have this here again, but there you go. Those are the common ways that people are doing it, are applying treatments to trees. We do have a document on emerald ash borer. If you're interested in more information, it's E1634. If you just search NDSU extension E1634, I'd be a lot of information about EAB. And that said, when I was talking about chemicals, we've updated this and we don't recommend spraying the crown of the tree. That's just too non-specific and not very effective actually at protecting the tree from EAB. These injections into the systemic, the vascular system of the tree where you get the systemic action where the tree moves the chemical around internally are much more effective. And I've always said do nothing is an option. And it is, but I'm gonna really strongly recommend don't do nothing. All right, just waiting for trees to die. Yes, everybody has that right to do that, but I just worry about the safety that happened that the safety issues that come into play with standing dead ash trees. They can be really dangerous. So I'm just strongly recommending people think about what their plan is gonna be, which of these routes you're gonna take for your individual trees or in a community, what combination of things you're gonna do. Trees provide us lots of benefits. They're beautiful, they provide habitat for wildlife, they provide a shade, they have a value. Is the cost of treatment worth it to you? That's gonna be different for each individual person. So that said, it's something people are gonna just have to think about and make their decisions. And I think that's our 20 minutes, Tom. I don't know how you wanna handle questions. I'll ask him to Joe. We got some questions already, ready to go here. So here's a question. This person's from the Appalachian Mountains and they're using a non-invasive predatory insect to control different types of tree paths. Is that type of strategy being used for emerald ash borer? Yes, it is. Okay, at the federal level throughout the whole U.S., it's being organized by the USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are four insects that have been brought over from Asia that are parasitoids. And don't ask me the difference between a parasite and a parasitoid, I can't remember. But anyway, they're pretty specific to emerald ash borer. The challenge here is up in our cold northern weather. I know that some of the parasite toids are doing well in the Twin Cities and they're still being tested to see how far north they'll get. Okay, how about can you trap an emerald ash borer similar to the way you trap Japanese beetles? Not really. There are some chemicals, pheromones that have been developed, but they're not as effective. The Japanese beetle traps, the chemical that draws the Japanese beetles in is super effective. It's phenomenal. I've seen traps that are just full. The EAB traps, even with the pheromones, they're not super effective. Yeah, are those those purple traps you see hanging like on rest stops? The purple prism traps, they're okay. They're not great. Even, we've tried different lures in them and some lures better than others, but still nothing great. There's a report here from Manitoba in Buzhua, Manitoba, Canada. They said there was a lot of emerald ash borer there last fall, there you go. So you can take the cold there. Oh, there's no doubt about that. EAB was found in Winnipeg, I wanna say in 2018, maybe even 2017. Yeah, it's been there a while. So it has spread slowly in Winnipeg. I think what's gonna spread a little faster here, but the further south you go, the faster it spreads. Okay, Joe, you showed a slide that showed woodpecker damage and bark splits. Yes. Are bark splits a potential indicator of emerald ash borer? They are, and I'm gonna go to this slide here and this slide here. They are a potential indicator of emerald ash borer. And what happens there is an individual larva will have its gallery under the bark and it'll develop, it'll grow, it'll do whatever, but it won't spread beyond that one individual gallery. And a year or two later, the tree tries to grow over it and it might, but in the meantime, the bark will split over where that gallery was. That is one way to find EAB, that's a search for. I have a hard time seeing them, even with binoculars. They are tough to find. Okay, Joe, you say an ash tree can tolerate one year of emerald ash borer, but is there a point of no return? The point of no return is about 30% crown dieback. Okay, when people are deciding whether or not to treat a tree chemically, the tree has to be able to take that chemical in. It can't have lost so much, it can't be so damaged that it won't bring the chemical in. And the exact percentage has been debated over the years, 30%, maybe 40% crown dieback, a tree has a chance of recovering. More than that, it really doesn't. Okay, how about is there any damage that occurs to the tree due to that stem injection treatment? Well, sure, I mean, it is wound, but it's very small, very small holes, and if it's every two years or even three years, the tree will grow over those wounds. If the tree is otherwise healthy, it should grow over that wound within a year. Joe, when you examine a potential infested tree, how deep do you scrape the bark to look for the pest? Well, I'm only gonna scrape the bark on a log, I'm not gonna scrape the bark on a tree. You barely have to go under the bark. Excuse me, you have to go under the bark, I guess you do have to go down, you can go down all the way to the wood because the larva, the egg is laid on the outside of the bark and it goes in and it starts to tunnel back and forth. It's very much serpentine, but as it gets bigger, it starts to go a little deeper, throughout the course of the one to two year life cycle, and then eventually it does go into the wood, maybe one or two rings into the wood, so you don't have to go very deep. Okay, Joe, how about with these trees that get emerald ash borer? Is there an age consideration with a tree to like the young trees less likely to get the damage? Is there like, are we sure if I planted ash tree today, I'm gonna be safe for 10 years, for example, or is it'll be more very small? It's not an age thing at all, and there are no specific characteristics, other than species, green ash, black ash, white ash are all very susceptible. Blue ash, which I've seen two in North Dakota in 20 years, blue ash is a little less susceptible. Okay, Joe, so now these people are all worried about their ash trees now. So what's the first sign or symptom that you would say people should be on a lookout for? Is it the woodpecker damage or the suckering or crowned dieback or what? Any one of those could be a symptom, but again, we've got so many insects and diseases, especially, excuse me, we've got so many native borers and bark beetles that hit ash trees that cause similar symptoms. It's really hard to tell. Basically, it's those back and forth galleries, whoops. And I don't have the pictures of the back and forth galleries, sorry. Okay, there it is, it's that back and forth gallery that I look for. Now from the outside, I'm starting to train my eye better for those wood, those dime size holes in the upper third of the canopy. Okay, here's a question in general for residential tree analysis. Do extension agents or arborists make house calls to diagnose problems in residential areas? Arborists usually do, usually. Extension agents, it depends on the individual agent. Some of them have more time than others and some of them feel more confident than others. So they can contact their local county extension agent and just get a gauge as far as what the situation is. And I think it also helps for people to provide a lot of information about it, provide, we get a lot of digital photos from people that really can speed up the process because house calls can take a lot of time. And there's a lot of people to serve out there in the county with a lot of issues. How about, oh, you mentioned there's a lot of native bores. Are there other paths that create these types of galleries? The serpentine gallery here going back and forth is very specific to EAB. And especially early in an infestation, more when the tree gets dozens or hundreds of bores in it, then these galleries, you kind of lose that serpentine. Some of our native bores have curvy galleries. I'm just gonna put curvy there because they're kind of all over the place, but they're distinctly not serpentine, are natives. So if somebody does find emerald ash borer or you find it, you're probably gonna be the guy who finds it, you'll be the diagnose because that's who I'd call if I had a question. They went to the next time you're in Bismarck. Does the state help provide some funding if I have an infested tree to help with the removal costs? For homeowners, no. I know some cities may have a little bit of financial support but even if it's just removing branches and all the debris from the boulevard if the homeowner gets it. But for individuals, no, there are grants that are available to communities through the North Dakota Forest Service and they have to be public trees, public trees on public property. Okay, so that's it for ash trees, Joe. Since we've got a minute here, there's another question. Like you mentioned about how the systemic treatments are the way to go after bores, the emerald ash borer. And do you feel we should use the same approach with bronze birch borer? Or do those crown foliar applications do the job or stem soaking or do you like the injections? Okay, it has a lot of different questions you just asked there, Tom. Really, sorry. It's okay. Bronze birch borer is related to emerald ash borer. It's the cousin that's very specific to birch trees. Thing about birch trees is they can fight bronze birch borer if they're well hydrated. If they're drought stressed, they get nailed by bronze birch borer. So I'd say, first of all, with bronze birch borer, you can use a cultural treatment. You don't have to go right to chemical. That said, these systemic treatments are good for bronze birch borer too. Whether they're injections into the stem or the chemical is put on the ground at the base of the tree and the tree takes it up that way, they're pretty effective. Yep. Okay, that's good to know. And their cousins, they're both from Asia and- No, they're not. No, no, bronze birch borer is native to North Dakota. Bronze birch borer is native. They're both in the genus Agrilus. Right, and one key difference is bronze birch borer. A birch tree, it's stress can be a little different. It's almost a magnet for bronze birch borer. But you say for amyl dash borer, stress isn't necessarily so important. No, it's not, surprisingly. Yeah, so there's not really much culture we can do about it. Just have to be on the lookout for it and call you at the first suspicion. Call your county extension agent first. There you go. And, okay, that's great. Joe, thank you very much for your talk today. It was outstanding. You bet, thank you. Thank you.