 This program is made possible by a cooperative effort of the U.S. Forest Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. The documentary has been produced to educate the public to the threat posed by the emerald ash borer. I'm Vince Wade. This is a story of death and destruction. It's about an invasion and the loss of defenseless, innocent victims. No, it's not about Iraq. In fact, this neighborhood in Redford Township outside of Detroit is one of the battlegrounds. It's the story of a desperate fight against a little emerald green bug from Asia that's killing millions of shade-giving ash trees like these. As you'll see at the end of this program, these trees are doomed. Chances are this is the first time you've seen this bug, yet it is changing our lives. It is a killer and a relentless one at that. It is the emerald ash borer beetle. By conservative estimates, there are at least 10 billion ash trees in North America. The bug is attacking them at an astonishing rate. It has destroyed millions of shade-giving ash trees and it is costing us millions of dollars. Those dollars are paying for removal of now hazardous dead trees and a desperate federal and state effort around the Great Lakes in Ontario to stop it before it kills even more. The emerald killer was first noticed in the U.S. in suburban Detroit. The first efforts to stop it began with a quarantine on moving ash wood from the counties around Detroit for fires or ash trees for planting. Soon, dead or dying ash trees were being cut down. The wood is ground into small chips and then burned at a cogeneration electric plant. It's the only surefire way of stopping this deadly pest. Ken Rauscher heads up the Michigan Department of Agriculture pest management division. This is a very devastating insect pest. It's an exotic pest. It's one that doesn't naturally occur in Michigan, discovered here just two years ago. However, by the time we discovered it, it had already infested approximately 2,500 square miles. It's a very large area in Southeast Michigan. What it does is put our 700 million ash trees here in Michigan at risk, a very significant risk. We know, for instance, that in Southeast Michigan alone, there are probably between 15 and 20 million ash trees, probably 8 to 12 million of which are dead or dying. So this is a very significant pest to Michigan and ultimately to the eastern two-thirds of the United States. Ironically, ash trees were planted years ago as shade tree replacements for elm trees, which had been devastated by Dutch elm disease. Ash trees are plentiful on neighborhood and city streets, in parks, along golf courses, and of course in wooded areas. The emerald ash borer is what is known as an invasive species. It comes from China and other parts of Asia. It is one of a growing number of exotic pests from other parts of the world attacking our ecosystem. Vic Mastro is an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mastro believes invasive species may ultimately pose a bigger threat to us than global warming. Potentially the largest issue that we're going to have to deal with in the next 50 or 100 years. And you can make an argument about whether global change, global environmental change, is going to be a greater issue. But I think for the U.S., it's a toss-up between that and invasive species. Between that and the impact of invasive species on our environment, on our natural systems, on our agricultural systems, and on our cities and urban areas. No one knows exactly how the emerald ash borer got here or when. The best guess is that it arrived in a wooden shipping crate like this from China. This neighborhood in Canton Township is viewed by some experts as the beach head, as ground zero for the emerald ash borer's deadly invasion. This subdivision sits near a light industrial park that receives freight shipments from all over the world. Around 1998, 1999, something devoured over a hundred ash trees along the streets of this subdivision. The tree experts were baffled. They now believe it was the first attack of the emerald ash borer in the United States. Two years ago, when scientists and tree experts finally identified what they were dealing with, the emerald ash borer already was a significant invading force. What concerns the experts is the fact the emerald ash borer attacks healthy trees as well as those in distress. During early summer, the bugs mate like there's no tomorrow, and in a sense that's true. The lifespan of an adult emerald ash borer is about three weeks. The females use what is called an ovipositor to leave their eggs in crevices in the ash tree's bark. The eggs turn to larvae which then tunnel beneath the bark to the soft life-giving cambium layer. Through the fall, winter and spring larvae by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, tunnel in S-shaped patterns through the cambium layer disrupting water and nutrients moving through the tree thereby strangling it. In early summer, scores of new adults emerge through D-shaped holes in the bark and resume the deadly cycle. Most people don't realize something is wrong until they see dead branches in the top of the tree. By then, the tree's days are numbered. This particular map covers all Wayne County primary roads and state roads. The staff of the Wayne County Forestry Division has watched the bugs deadly attacks move swiftly through Detroit and its suburbs. From Canton Township, it spread quickly to Westland, Plymouth, Wayne and Livonia and other parts of Wayne County. I think it's pretty safe to say that virtually every ash tree in Wayne County is either diseased or will be diseased in the next couple years. And you're talking about two to three million trees according to what you told us. Well, the State Department of Agriculture has estimated 28 million ash trees within a six-county southeast Michigan region. The state says that there's about 700 million ash trees on a statewide basis. So if you do the math, we're probably figuring about two to three million ash trees potentially in Wayne County. And I think folks are going to have to work with their local governments, work with their county governments, to make sure that we understand the nature of the crisis, that we're willing, in many cases, to pay to have these trees removed, and then also to start taking steps to replant and to bring new life and new trees back to these neighborhoods. It wasn't long before the emerald ash borer was on a killing spree through the counties surrounding Detroit. Upscale homes in Novi have street side reminders of where ash trees once stood. The landscaped median of 12-mile road and Farmington Hills still bears the stump scars of the beetle's deadly attack. Wooded areas east of Windsor, Ontario led to a multimillion-dollar firebreak-style effort to halt the bug's advance. Deb McCullough is a Michigan State University professor and part of the scientific team studying the bug and potential ways to stop it. Professor McCullough believes the emerald ash borer may have landed here in the mid-90s, but we didn't start noticing significant damage to ash trees until a few years later. When we started looking and really understood what this beetle was doing was the summer of 2002. And at that time, there was quite a few infested and dying trees, but there wasn't a lot of dead trees. So this is still something that's fairly recent. In terms of how it's spreading, there's a couple of different things that play a part in there. One way it spreads, we call it diffusion, but it's like ripples in a pond. You have a population here, they mate, they produce offspring. Those offspring move out a little further and a little further and it kind of radiates out. The other thing that's happened is that before we knew about this beetle, infested nursery trees were moved around. Infested firewood was moved around. Infested ash logs were moved to sawmills, those kinds of things. And what that does is create little satellite populations. Then each one of those satellites goes through its own process of building and diffusing. And pretty soon you have lots of ripples in the pond and they coalesce into something that's about 5,000 square miles now. It's a question dismayed homeowners, government officials and nature lovers are asking more and more as the emerald ash borer continues its deadly march through our neighborhoods, parks, golf courses and forests. Steve Prince is a forester with the city of Novi. As we went for a walk through a park marred by dead ash trees, Prince marveled at the speed of the devastation. First year, 2001, we took down one dead ash tree. The next year we took down about a hundred and then just to give you an idea of the scope, then we took down about, you know, five or six hundred the following year. So, I mean, it just exponentially just grew enormously. At Detroit's Pingree Park, worried homeowners are struggling to understand what is killing the trees and the beauty of their park. If you both kill these trees, there's gonna be nothing but stunts. We never have, you know, any taken care of. You're gonna have nothing but sunshine. Yeah. Yeah, too much sunshine. Too much. When I came to Detroit in 1948, we just had greenery everywhere. And then this Dutch M disease attacked our trees. And we lost most of all our trees because I had three in front of my house and now I have zero. So, we're knowing that this emerald ash bug is, it seems to be more dangerous than even the M ash, I mean, the M bug. If the emerald ash borer isn't stopped, it's going to be a national crisis. Enforcement agents from the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service try to monitor shipments arriving in the U.S., but it's a near impossible task given the scope of global trade. Philip Bell and Noel Schneeberger are key players in a massive federal effort to eradicate the emerald ash borer. Bell says the economic stakes are enormous. Well, nationally, you're looking at about a $20 billion impact on the... $20 billion with a B. Billion with a B. That's been... Schneeberger of the U.S. Forest Service says it's vital that we stop the emerald killer before it invades our forests. Once it moves into the woods, general woods, whether it's national forest, state forest, private woodlands, once it's out in the forest, we've lost it. At the local level, city and county officials are struggling with the aftermath of this deadly invasion. Parts of Westland, Michigan, look like a post-apocalyptic landscape with lines of dead trees decaying in the growing season sun. The city budget has been whacked to the tune of $2 million over two years. Communities like Westland have no choice but to remove dead ash trees from streets and parks. If a limb from a dead ash tree falls on a car or a person, the municipality is liable. Westland Mayor Sandra Cicerelli has advice for her peers in Ohio, Indiana, and other bordering states. Time is of the essence. One of the things that has really alarmed and surprised us is the speed with which these trees die. I mean, they are just dying in an alarming rate and it's been very difficult to keep up with removing them. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street. The emerald ash borer is leaving Sunshine where shade is wanted. You might say it's a scorched earth attack with costs beyond removing dead trees. Tom Wilson heads up Westlands Department of Public Service. We walked through a neighborhood that was infested by the emerald ash borer. This street was lined with ash trees and they were fairly large, somewhere in the 27 to 30 inch diameter tree, somewhere between 40 and 50 feet tall. So they did provide a tremendous amount of shade for this neighborhood. If you look behind us to the right here, you'll notice that back over there, the trees give quite a bit of shade to the homes. Very nice. And to the area. What they call a tree-lined street. Exactly. And then over here we've got a bright, sun-shiny... Unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately bright, sun-shiny area. And that seems okay, but there's some expenses that each one of our residents will incur because of that. Such as? That tree provided shade which would lower your air conditioning bills. It provided some windbreak in the wintertime to lower your heating bills. That is no longer available to these residents. There's some other expenses. They're gonna have increased water bills if they wanna keep their lawn nice and green because obviously it'll take much more water to water that lawn. It's sunshine instead of shaded. So taking the tree down is not the worst of it in terms of the expense of the ash borer's damage. No, it is absolutely affected each and every one of our citizens in Westland. And it affects you, you know, not only that, but I'm sure the resale value isn't as great because of that. So those are some of the things that we've encountered in the city of Westland. The Emerald Killer is now in Ohio and Indiana too. Tom Harrison of the Ohio Department of Agriculture calls the Emerald Ash Borer the most serious pest they've encountered in the last quarter century. He explains how the beetle kills ash trees. It is so devastating to the host. It kills the trees. Within two or three years of first hitting the trees, there could be thousands of Emerald Ash Bores in the tree and they eventually kill them. They cut off the plumbing inside the tree. Here in Ohio, the tree-killing bug first appeared near Toledo, just across the line from Michigan. It didn't take long to spread to several counties. A couple of our infestations have been started by infested nursery stock brought down from Michigan. Currently, it seems that since we've gotten the nursery industry kind of on our side, that firewood being brought down by Michigan, by, you know, Michigan firewood is one of the biggest reasons that we're finding infestations down here in Ohio now. Infested nursery tree stock is how the bug jumped from the Midwest to the borders of Virginia and Maryland. Nursery inspection is very important and that's a large part of what our program is about is keeping up with what's going on and why we have nursery inspectors because they're the ones who oftentimes catch these things. And the nurserymen need to be more responsible about shipping things. When they get information about not shipping, they need to take it seriously because that's how the whole thing started. In our neck of the woods. Like homeowners and local governments, tree nursery owners have been hit hard on the wallet by the bugs assault on ash trees. They were stuck with trees that had to be destroyed and weren't covered by insurance. Some lost over a million dollars in inventory. This is the emerald ash borer in the larvae stage when it does the most damage to the tree. This is the emerald ash borer as an adult as it's ready to fly the coop and kill more trees. This piece of bark was taken off a tree in LaGrange County, Indiana. The question is, how did these bugs get here? LaGrange County, Indiana is just a few miles from the Michigan and Ohio borders. It's largely Amish country where they burn lots of firewood for heat. The beetle could have arrived in sawmill logs from Michigan or in campground firewood. Either way, Indiana is now fighting to keep the bug from spreading. There's one right there on the bark. It's singing a cameo. So this is actually... He would be ready. This one is almost ready to turn into an adult. I would say within a month, he would tune his way out. This is his growth line, for lack of a better term. And he's been strangling this tree by attacking the cambium between the wood and the bark. And so the moisture coming up and the nutrients coming down. He's living off it. He's living off that. And what he does is he interrupts the flow. Like a leech. Yes, yes. But he interrupts the flow of the fluids from the roots and the leaves so it can't transpire and move materials up and down. So it slowly kind of suffocates the trees. And they seem to be able to fight a little bit in the beginning. They don't seem to really ravage a tree, but it seems like once they've been in the tree two or three years, they just take over. And a tree can eventually have thousands of ash borers. If you looked at this one here, which is a little further along, this tree probably did have thousands of borers in it. So there's lots of the telltale trails here. You seen anything like this attack trees in Indiana before? No, this is one of the most devastating things I've ever seen. Nothing like this on any other tree. In addition to Ohio and Indiana, other Great Lakes states are nervously watching the march of the Emerald Ash Borer. So are states adjacent to them. Each has ash trees that could be attacked by the beetle. This wooded lot is south of Quincy, Michigan, not far from the Indiana border. This wooded lot, or what's left of it, looks like it's been hit by a major tornado. In fact, 2050 ash trees have been cut down and hauled out of here because of the devastation of the Emerald Ash Borer. And this is just a tiny fraction of the damage that the bug has done. The Ash Tree Eradication Program in Quincy is part of a federally funded program to massively counterattack against the beetle's devastation in areas outside the primary infestation area. Other efforts include trapping projects where researchers deliberately stress an ash tree by stripping away bark. They apply a sticky substance on the tree that can trap the bug. This helps identify how far an area infestation has spread. All across southern Michigan and parts of Indiana, Ohio, and southern Ontario, people are dismayed at the sight of felled ash trees and the sound of chainsaws and chippers at work. Sandy Nolan is one of them. Well, we had beautiful shade in that backyard. We didn't even need an umbrella at one time. It was just gorgeous. You know, as all things pass, it has. Nolan lives in a condo complex where crews have been felling ash trees that have become Emerald Ash Borer victims. Heath Jackson and Eric Schudy are tree tremors who deal with the devastation every day. Man, so many trees. I had one lady, we took down her tree. She, uh, when it was coming down, she cried because she loved that tree so much. You know, it hurt me because I'm taking it down, but what can I do? I mean, there's ash trees everywhere. It's a beautiful street tree. They've planted it in every city, every neighborhood has them. So there's a lot of work to be done. One part of this battle against the bug is surrounded by question marks. It is the question of whether property owners should pay for sprays and injections to essentially inoculate an ash tree against the beetle. There is no simple answer, but if someone guarantees you they can protect your ash tree, you'd better hold on to your wallet. The insecticides help, insecticides kill the insect, but there is a sheer number of insects. There are so many of them that it's basically an uphill battle. Researchers at Michigan State University with financial support from the federal government are working hard to find an effective way to eradicate the bug. Some insecticides have been 80% effective, but if 1,000 emerald ash borers are attacking your tree, 80% effectiveness leaves 200 of them to multiply and resume the deadly assault. The ash is really a remarkable tree. It's a very resilient tree. If it's not injured too badly, it has the ability to put new wood out. It will callous over the old injury and you come back a few years later and if the tree hasn't been infested again, it's probably gonna be doing fine. Now there's some point where the tree is so badly injured that you can't inject material into the trunk or into the soil because it simply won't move up the trunk and get out into the canopy. We're still trying to figure out where that is. Where's that cutoff point? If you own an ash tree and you notice a lack of growth and vitality in the crown of the tree, there's a strong chance that tree has been attacked and is dying. The attack of the emerald ash borer and other invasive pests has prompted arborists to urge people to use diversity when planting trees. If one goes, at least you'll have others. Eventually, a killer for the emerald killer will be found but for Tim and Lynn Betcher of Lansing, it'll come too late. They've already lost two huge ash trees that shaded most of their backyard. One tree was so big, they built their deck around it. There's only sawdust, a large hole and plenty of sunshine where the shady ash had been. The other giant ash shaded and cooled a play area. We're just 85 degrees out or whatever. It's hard to let the kids out to, you know, go bake in the sun. It's just a big bummer. I mean, at least, you know, we still have other trees left, but it was a beautiful tree. But that was once upon a time. Now the tree is gone. The emerald ash borer beetle is an exotic enemy destroying much of our cherished natural beauty. It's frightening because we can't control it, but the fate of our ash trees is not totally out of our hands. There is something the average person can do. Firewood is a real primary means of artificial spread of this pest. The firewood is the key issue or one of the key movers of this pest though and to stop or not move it is the key here. We can't keep moving infested wood out beyond the quarantine area. It's just too easy for these beetles to become established. We have ash trees that grow all over the place. It's awful easy for them to find a host if they do come out of that firewood. And so yes, we're really trying to get people to think about it and just not take that firewood up north when they go to Hunter or Camp or whatever. This is a very devastating pest. It's a very tricky pest. This is one that can be moved by people unknowingly with firewood, with logs, with nursery stock. Anything that's ash, people have to quit moving it. And if they're moving firewood and they don't know whether it's ash or not, they should not move that then either. Firewood is really an easy way just to spread the eggs and the larva. And once a few insects get out and they multiply by the thousands for each insect is capable of that. So it can spread fast and before you know it, it'll be in another town and it'll be even that much harder to control. As is the case so often, man is his own worst enemy in dealing with the emerald ash borer. Thousands of people around the Great Lakes love camping and retreating to cottages and cabins where firewood is an essential commodity. But the devastating emerald ash borer can easily hitch a ride on that wood you take to a campsite or your family's getaway cottage. Billboards on interstates in Michigan warn people not to move firewood, especially ashwood. Since most people can't tell species by looking at logs, the safest bet is to not move any firewood. But some campers say other campers are unaware of the ashwood crisis. I don't think they understand it because if you talk to anybody about it, they act like they're stupid or something, you know, that there's no such a thing. So you don't think most of these people in this park probably know about the firewood ban? No. When you come into that thing, they got a big thing on the wall and they're, you know, notices they ought to put something in there. So if you stop or up to the bathroom, put it up on the wall. If you come in there and if you're waiting to get in a shower or something, you might read that, you know? So you think there need to be more signs? Yeah. Yep. There need to be signs all over. I was aware of the restrictions on camping, bringing some of your firewood like somebody might chop firewood off the property. So you haven't taken chop down ash tree wood and brought it up up here to the camp site? I would have prior to this year. I didn't really think about how it was being transported through the state of Michigan or how the disease was spreading. But I did hear of that law this year and that's where we bought all our wood at the campsite this year. Craig Kellogg is a federal emerald ash borer program coordinator. His message, like that of the other experts we spoke with, is don't move firewood. Buy it at or near your campsite. Firewood's probably one of the number one ways of moving the pest artificially. It's probably the number one cause for movement that people don't realize is a problem. Many people move it unintentionally and they don't really recognize or realize that the beetle in the wood can still be viable even if it's left at a campsite. We're looking at hundreds of millions of ash trees just alone in Michigan dying, let alone if you look at the border where some of the beetles have been found in Indiana at a campground right across the border, the population there has been several years old now too because it was undetected until it became of epidemic portions. The overall effect of this, you could lose your ash population in the country, possibly North America. We began by showing you a suburban street lined with ash trees that had been infested with the emerald ash borer beetle. This is that same street. The trees are gone now, chopped and chipped and hauled away. It'll be years before this neighborhood can enjoy the shade and natural beauty that once characterized this street. For the people who live here, the battle against the emerald ash borer is too late. But billions of other ash trees and other non-infested areas can be saved if the public and government officials work together against the emerald killer. I'm Vince Wade, thanks for watching. This program is made possible by the US Forest Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the USDA in order to educate the public about the threat posed by the emerald ash borer. Public support and participation is needed in detection, control and eradication. Don't move firewood.