 My name is Joseph Perlin, I'm the superintendent of Parks and Forestry for the City of Sheboygan, Department of Public Works, and tonight we're mainly going to be talking about private trees, your resident trees, but before that I'm going to just take a minute to thank Mayor Mike Banderstein for being here tonight, Alderperson Scott Linnabelsky for this area that's here tonight, and later if there's some questions afterwards, I also have my lead man for the city tree crew. You probably have a better chance of seeing him sometimes than I do because he's out there with the crews working on city trees. So very shortly the city in 2009 did an inventory, the whole county did actually, and the big thing behind it was taking account of ash trees as well as other trees, but at that time we had an account in the city for city trees of about 5,000 ash trees. Now these are trees that are street trees in some public, some of the more popular murk trees. Now a street tree is considered a tree between the street and the sidewalk. So those are the city's responsibility for the most part. When new trees are planted, newly planted, we do ask the adjacent owner to try and water those trees, so we do ask for cooperation in that. Broken branches, things like that, we do look forward to people calling us. They think it's dead, we'll follow up on that too, phone calls. So we have about 5,000 trees, it will take a little bit that we have to deal with. Now we did see this coming, in 2015 I did write a grant to the DNR and received an urban forestry grant. And with that money that we received, we are working with a forestry consultant to write our tree management plan and tree planting inventory, so sites that we can plant. And they'll specifically spell out where we're going to plant what types of trees. So we have a lot of work to do in the forestry department. We have a crew of basically four people full time and they do everything with those trees in public right of ways in the parks, from planting to trimming to elevating and removals. So a lot of work to be done and a lot of planning at this time for us. So as far as ash trees are concerned, we figure we're probably within the third, fourth year that they're actually been in the city. The next four years or so are going to be a little light at first, but then really ramp up. Because from everything I've been told by year eight, and this will probably be covered, they just start dying. So probably be really without ash trees by year eight. We have decided, and what we're working towards towards our management plan that we're still working on, but hopefully done in a month, is that we're going to start treating. Probably we're going to try to treat half those trees. So about 2,500 trees that we're going to pick the good ones, the ones that are still healthy, that are larger, that are doing us a lot of good in many ways. Those are the trees that we're going to have to treat. And again, we're figuring probably about half. Bill's probably going to be covering that tonight also, so you're going to learn more about the treating process. That's just a little of what we're getting as a city going to start doing. You'll probably start hearing a lot more of it. We've got to bring our management plan to the City Council, and you'll see that in the next, or the course of the next month or so. But if you have questions about street trees that are adjacent to you or some place in the city, when you call the Department of Public Works, you're probably going to end up with me or Kenny over there. This time I'm going to introduce Bill McNee. Bill is a DNR Forest Health Specialist out of Plymouth. So he is the man that we call, when Kenny took down an elm tree, ash tree, and thought, something's kind of weird here, because we've been watching for the last 24 years. And Kenny was right. So it was confirmed that it did have emerald ash borer. And since then, we've really, really been looking hard. We actually found it in two different, two other places. So three places in the city. And if you read that press release, you'll know where those are. So at this time, Bill is going to talk to you about your private trees. Thank you. If you have any questions, I do have some business cards, which I forgot to put out on the table. If you call the DNR office in Plymouth and ask for the bug guy, you will get me. So that's the easy way to find me. My job these days is largely to work with the detection and management of emerald ash borer and tell communities like Sheboygan the bad news that the sample that they have is the dreaded insect. I cover the southeast part of the state. And if you have questions about this insect or others, feel free to give me a call or take a look at the DNR website. What I will do is talk about the biology of the insect and what it does to your trees and your community's trees and then some information for you about whether you want to treat the trees as Joe just mentioned for the city's trees or remove the trees and plant another species that is not susceptible to this insect. Back to the origins of the insect. We are dealing with an Asian insect that's native to eastern Asia and it hitchhiked its way here into North America near the Detroit airport in one of the Detroit suburbs, probably in the late 80s or early 90s. Most likely inside some solid packing materials that they use inside those big shipping containers to brace whatever is inside. And the tree ring analysis that was later done said that the trees were already dying in Michigan by 1994. And as you'll see from some of the pictures, that probably meant that this insect arrived in North America in the late 80s or early 90s. And the late 80s by now is pushing 30 years ago. So it's not a recent arrival anymore, but it is a fairly recent arrival here in the city. Back then in the 1990s, Ash in the Midwest was having all sorts of problems. There were disease issues, drought issues, bacterial issues, and nobody had heard of this insect. And even in eastern Asia, this is a fairly rare little-known insect like we have fairly rare little-known insects here. But little did we know back then here was this hidden insect lurking underneath the bark contributing to the death of these trees or even being the primary cause. But it would be another five years or so until we found it. And back then, much like over in Michigan, what we did here when a tree died, it gets cut down and you take it up to the lake. Or you give it to your brother-in-law and away it goes halfway across the state. And unknowingly, we were spreading this bug all over the Midwest and we didn't even know it was here. So it's kind of a... In hindsight, it was an unfortunate event that happened. As you can see on the map, it's native to eastern Asia all the way from Taiwan and China into some very cold parts of Russia. So it can tolerate very cold temperatures and we get those here in the upper Midwest. I was working for the DNR back in 2002 and I remember that first email that they sent around from the Department of Agriculture saying that they had found this new green insect that people weren't really familiar with and they had to actually send samples all the way to Slovakia or Serbia or some Eastern European country to figure out what this insect is. It was that obscure. And in 2002, it was found in Michigan and then within a year or so, it had been found at quite a few sites in Michigan and other states like Ohio and Indiana and Ontario were already finding this insect. And the writing was really on the wall that it was so widespread that we were not likely to be able to get rid of it. Ironically, by the time it was first found near Detroit, it was already present up in Houghton or up in the Kiwenaugh. That's quite a distance to move an insect before you even know you have an insect. So it was in quite a few places before we even knew it was here. In 2008, we first found it near Newburgh. It's a little town between West Bend and Port Washington at a rural property and we did some tree-ring analysis and it was already here by 2004. So by the time it got introduced, at least four years later, we finally found it. And because of this lag between introduction and detection, it's likely that we have a whole bunch of other infestations here in this state that we have just not found yet. Like two months ago, Cheboygan's infestation was here, but we just didn't know it yet. So undoubtedly there's more. Cheboygan County undoubtedly has more communities that have the bug. We just have not found it yet because it's not an easy bug to find early on, as you'll see. Last year or in 2014, there was also some bad news that this insect was found in a species of ornamental tree up here called white fringe tree. This is a very white flowery tree in the spring that's not native, but it's planted as an ornamental tree. And this insect breeds in it. It makes the same S-shaped galleries that you'll see on these samples. And it does just fine. Fortunately, we don't have it up here as a native species. So the impact will be lower. At this point, the insect has been found in much of southern Cheboygan County. So if you're here from outside of the city and live down there in Cedar Grove, Oostburg, places like that, you have this insect already. It's been down there for a number of years. It was first found down there in 2014. A couple of weeks ago, it was confirmed here in the city, as Joe mentioned. And we also found it in the town of Cheboygan Falls in a little enclave that is surrounded by the city of Cheboygan Falls. So undoubtedly, if you live in one of those two communities, you have this pest already at some level of infestation. So the information I will present here does apply to other people from outside of the city, if any of you are here. It was first found in Random Lake in the town of Holland in the summer of 2014. And even then, you could see that the trees at these spots were showing some decline. They are probably long since then. As you'll see on the map here, Cheboygan County is part of the quarantine area in red, which means that items that could spread the insect like ash firewood, nursery stock, logs that are cut down and unprocessed need to stay in the red area with the exception of some of these counties, which are actually regulated by a gypsy moth quarantine. So if you keep it in any of the surrounding counties, that is legal to move ash material, although it is discouraged because many of those areas do not know they have EAB yet. Now Emerald Ashmore is a big deal in North America. It is probably at this point the most devastating invasive insect that we have. Many of you will remember Dutch Elm disease back in the 60s and 70s and 80s, came and took your nice big elms. This is probably going to be at least as devastating as that over the long term. We have a lot of ash here in many of the communities because after those elmetries died, what did they plant? They planted ash. It grows well in the cities, it's cheap, it's easily available, and they planted a lot of it. And now we're paying the price for planting so much of one species. So as you'll see later on, I encourage you to mix up your species if you buy additional species to plant in your property. Now here in Wisconsin we have four ash species, white, green, black, and a couple stands of blue ash, which is more of a tree species native to places like Indiana or Ohio or Kentucky. We have a couple spots here, so it's not really common. There are a few ornamentals planted, but it's not a very common tree species. And they're ornamental varieties. So if you go down to the tree nursery and buy an ash tree, it is likely to be a derivative of one of these species, and therefore it would be susceptible to emerald ash borer. Now hopefully the nurseries are not selling ash anymore because there's really no demand for it. Partly because it will be more than 99% fatal to ash trees. So of every thousand ash trees here, less than 10 of them will survive. And it turns out that in the early years they were just seeing literally every ash tree die because the ash trees that you buy at the tree nursery are largely clones or very closely related. So if there's little resistance, there's just little resistance because the genetic variation is not there like it is in the ash trees in the woods. Here in Wisconsin we have an estimated 834 million ash trees, more than an inch in diameter, so a little bigger than the knuckle on your thumb. And that's how small of a tree an ash borer can infest. I've actually seen it. It's a common tree here in Wisconsin. 20% of the street trees and 12% of the urban trees are ash and will be susceptible to this insect. And as you can see in the picture, that tree is infested. So how do you determine where a population is early on if the trees all look like that? It's very difficult. Even if you climb that tree and peel some branches, it is not easy to find. And that's partly why there's this lag time between it being introduced into an area and somebody confirms that it, yes, it is there. And usually that's three to five years. So as Joe mentioned, the past is likely being here in the city for at least three, maybe five years. And it will become a greater problem over time. Now at first, the mortality or the impacts on a community are fairly low. We have the two spots here in the city. The trees are showing some signs, but they're still alive. Most people would drive right or walk right past the tree, not know it's infested until he came to this meeting. But that will change. And as you can see on this graph, there's what's known as a death curve where the infestation starts off slow and starts off slow, but it's building because each of those female beetles is laying 50 to 100 eggs a year. And the mortality starts dying or starts increasing and eventually the trees start dying in increasing numbers and then you get this very rapid death of most of the ash trees in the community within a few years. So some of the communities down in the Milwaukee area are in this very rapid increase. Sheboygan is probably down in here somewhere yet. So as Joe mentioned, it probably will be 3, 4, 5, 6 years until you see this widespread death here in the community. Now that gives you a little time to prepare, to treat your trees as I'll discuss later, or to remove them before they die. Now what typically happens when that mortality really takes off is the city gets overwhelmed. They have limited staff, limited funding, yet all of these trees are dying all over town. They are starting to fall apart. They're dropping branches on vehicles, sidewalks, picnic tables, and that's a hazard that has to be dealt with often at the expense of other things like tree pruning or say new vehicles or paving a street. Neighbors can start getting very upset at each other because your neighbors' branches start falling on your car. Things like that happen and neighbors don't like it when their vehicle gets damaged. You do see examples of trees and branches falling on vehicles. If you go on YouTube, you'll find some videos of things happening. It may not be common to have a major catastrophe, but it does happen. In terms of ecology, the ecosystem is altered in the natural areas and typically invasive plants. You may have heard of things like buckthorn or garlic mustard or canary grass. Often take over and that site, especially if it's on wet ground, might actually be lost to forest and that has happened in other states in some places. Now from a state perspective, we were fortunate to learn from Michigan's failures and were fortunate that they got the past first. They also now have a hemlock insect that we can learn from their experience. If you remember the gypsy moth when it was blowing up here back in the mid-2000s, we could learn from Michigan's experience. We're lucky that we have them across the lake. They got this insect first and really the experimentation of how to deal with this insect and trying to get rid of it happened over there in Indiana and Ohio first. And typically what the plan was was to cut all of the ash trees within half a mile of where that known infestation was. Now as I showed you a couple slides ago, how do you find the true edge of the infestation to cut the trees down in trees that look like that? You don't. Now in hindsight it's pretty obvious back then this was a new thing and we were trying to get rid of it with the information we had. Now ultimately that failed everywhere. It was tried because you would cut all the trees within half a mile and then a year or two later you'd find it a quarter mile down the road or a hundred yards down the road and it was too late to do anything. You just could not find the true edge of that infestation and by the time we found emerald ash borer here that was pretty obvious and nobody was trying to get rid of the insect anymore. We were moving on into dealing with it if we have it or preventing it from getting here if we don't have it yet. So what we do now as state government is regulate the items like the firewood and the nursery stock that could be spreading EAB into new areas. We do a lot of public education, all sorts of websites, brochures, meetings like this for the public. We try to find new ones or confirm new infestations as we did here in Sheboygan. We manage the forests and that we are responsible for and encourage the private landowners to manage their forests with this insect in mind and for communities we do provide some competitive grant funding that they can apply for things like management plans or tree inventories to prepare for dealing with this insect. So I will show you some pictures if you've never seen these before. This is a neighborhood in Toledo, a very nice neighborhood. Remind you of the nice elms that we used to have many years ago. They knew in 2006 this neighborhood was infested. Now if you look at those trees, how many of you would think that those trees are infested? Probably none, but it was there and they knew that. Now three years later things have changed. Same street. So this is what ultimately is likely to happen here. Will it be five years from now? Will it be seven years? Will it be nine years? Remains to be seen. But ultimately if the trees are not treated this is what is going to happen to more than 99% of the ash trees here in the city. And this bug doesn't care if it's the city's trees or if it's the ash tree in your backyard. They are both very nice food for this insect. Now we have had EAB here in this state long enough that we have our nice, our own pictures of dead trees. This is the Ryan Road truck stop in Oak Creek and the insect was found there in 2009 and about three years later you could see around the truck stop the ash trees are dead. We have another good picture near Newburgh. This is about half a mile away from where it was initially found and literally within two years that forested area went from having live looking ash trees at least when I flew over it with an airplane to looking like this and it looks even worse now. The mortality has spread a couple miles down the road. So that is what will happen when the ash is left alone and especially when it's abundant its impacts are going to be dramatic on your property or your woods. In terms of the life cycle it has the typical life cycle of a beetle if you remember back to middle school biology egg, larva, pupa, adult this is exactly that. The larvae are these inch, inch and a half long worms as people call them that tunnel around underneath the bark and you'll notice that they have bell shaped segments. So if you are playing around with your tree which is an ash if it's not an ash all that's are off but in an ash tree if you see these bell shaped segments and a larva that's about an inch and a half it is likely EAB. Those tunnel around underneath the bark of the tree and what they do is they cut off the tree's food and water supply. So you'll see as I'll show you some pictures of the tree is basically starving and suffocating or dehydrating at the same time. When they're ready to pupate they turn into a pupa in the spring and then it transforms into the adult beetle which then choose its way out of the tree and flies to another tree or it may fly several miles to lay its eggs and the cycle repeats itself. The eggs are tiny you really need to know what to look for and need a hand lens to do it and then that tiny larva hatches animals right down into the nutritious tissue called phloem where all the sugars are and the cycle starts again. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago each female beetle can lay 50 to 100 eggs so the potential for very rapid population growth is here. People also miss the fact that it is smaller than a penny. So I put that picture in there to show you that's the actual size relative to a penny. So it's a pretty small insect but like many insects they make up for their size in just sheer numbers and that's how they have such a dramatic impact. Now as I mentioned the tunneling is cutting off the flow of food and water and there's a characteristic S shaped winding gallery and there is considerable variation they often overlap each other as you can see here when you get very high populations there's a bowl of spaghetti that you've tossed around that the galleries just go everywhere but that S shaped winding is fairly distinctive in an ashtree and this piece this gallery here was from the original piece of wood that they took down not too far from here in the city so that's Sheboygan's claim to fame in terms of EAB. What you'll see when the population and the tunneling has become big enough that it's actually starting to impact the tree is that the canopy starts to thin and then die so as you'll see here the canopy is starting to die back and the leaves are small they're kind of pale and yellowish and you can just look at that tree and see that something is not right with that tree and it's usually a fairly distinctive thinning sometimes it happens in a year sometimes the trees linger on for several years they thin a little each year and then they go we've seen some places where when the populations are high the tree looks fine in August and it's pretty clear that it's heavily infested during the winter when the woodpeckers hit it and it doesn't even leaf out the next year Yes. If you have a question now I will happily take it. Can that tree be safe? That tree no and I'll explain more later by the time this thinning is this extensive the tree is a goner usually it's about 30% of the canopy it looks like that that's about the cutoff some say 30 some say 50 when it's 100% it's too late to save so this is preventable here in the city you are early on so there should be very few trees as a proportion of the ash here in the city that will look like that this summer it will build up over time but there shouldn't be too many this year now the dieback where the thinning starts up top and works its way down over one or more years the easiest place for that little tiny larva to actually survive is up in the small branches the pressure of the resin and the water pressure is just not high up there so this tree has probably been infested for at least 2 to 3 more likely 3 to 5 years before it got to that point the year before there might have been some dieback or it may have looked just fine and until you see the tree leaf out in the spring it's hard to predict how it will react and typically within 4 to 6 years of first being infested they are on their last legs and they are already dead now a tree under stress will react in a number of ways one of which is the sprouting at the base of the tree or on the branches or sorry on the trunk and that's kind of a sign of distress sort of a last gas but trying to stay alive now this both of these can be due to other causes so just because you have sprouting does not necessarily mean that you have any rash tree but it is one of the symptoms of infestation and just like when you go to the doctor and he thinks you might have some kind of condition one symptom alone often does not make a diagnosis but several symptoms would lead to a diagnosis what is more distinctive is the exit hole that is made by the adult beetle if you look at the beetle face on it actually looks D shaped so when the beetle develops underneath the bark and is chewing its way out of the tree it is a little on the lazy side it chews a D shaped hole because that's how it can get out of the tree with the least amount of work so we get these nice distinctive D shaped holes in various orientations sometimes it's sideways sometimes it's upside down sometimes it's right side up so if you see these in your ash trees this is a more reliable symptom or sign of infestation now they are approximately one eighth of an inch wide so if you see other shapes like circles or ovals or big huge D shaped looking things that are say half an inch that is too big to be emerald ash borer or it's just a different insect sometimes you'll see a bark crack with a larval gallery underneath it and this doesn't happen in every tree but sometimes it does this tunneling that you see here can basically kill that area of the living tissue underneath the bark and when you have living tissue surrounding dead tissue that living tissue keeps on growing so it produces wound tissue like you see here these lips there's no living tissue and the tree is still getting bigger and bigger and ultimately you get a cracking of the bark just because there's no living tissue to keep making more bark so on occasion you see this but it's not common what is actually very common at this time of year and in late winter is our friend the woodpeckers really the best detector of EAB that we have we can hang traps they're moderately effective the woodpeckers during the winter they get kind of hungry and as they tap around the trees they figure out that there's a gallery a hollow area and they somehow figure out exactly where the larva is underneath the bark because it's overwintering there it's dormant it's not going to crawl away and they flake off the outer bark as you see here they've done that and when they figure out that there is a larva they make a bigger sort of pencil shaped hole and they drill right down in through the bark and they get that larva remember it's an inch and a half long it's a nice meal, nice big dinner for a small woodpecker and they may get a third or half of the larvae inside that tree and in the meantime they leave these nice obvious signs of infestation for us to see in say January February and March so they're the best thing we've got and we can drive around town this time of year and take a look and see if we have this flucking that wasn't there last fall now we also have insects that are often mistaken for emerald ash borer you've probably heard in the media or seen in the paper or online that it's a green bullet shaped insect well that's true it is a green bullet shaped insect but we also have other native green bullet shaped insects here that it really takes an expert to distinguish between that and emerald ash borer so that's part of my job is to be that person who tells you that yes I have emerald ash borer or no you have bronze poplar borer or honey locust borer or a similar North American cousin of this Asian insect we get a lot of other insects as you can see that are green and often mistaken for EAB the most common is this critter called the tiger beetle it's called the tiger beetle because it's predacious like the tiger this is a very green it's an emerald green beetle just like EAB but it runs around on the sidewalk and the lawn and the driveway during the summer and because it is a beetle it's green, same color people will swear that they have emerald ash borer but it's actually this other native insect that is actually beneficial it's a predator so it's not going to hurt your trees at all I have a similar picture like this on the table if you haven't got one already as I had mentioned a couple minutes ago there are other insects that will infest an ash tree these are native insects that figure out that a tree is weak or it's sick or it's stressed and they come in and infest it they may or may not kill it but they do infest it and what you can look at is the exit hole notice this one is round and big you could stick a pencil down that or a shotgun blast of tiny little round holes or this one actually makes an oval shaped hole you can look at that hole and the gallery underneath and identify the problem as being something other than EAB none of these make a D shaped hole and none of these make that S shaped winding gallery that you would find due to EAB in your ash trees now if you do find insects that you think are EAB or you have trees that you think have EAB we would certainly like to know how to make maps and plans and encourage others to manage their trees or their forests based on what you find so if you do think you have it please report it to the department of public works here in the city if you're from one of the other communities here in Sheboygan county that doesn't have EAB yet the easiest way is to report it to the town or for faster service report it to the emeraldashbore website emeraldashbore.wi.gov we are here to identify insect problems so we are more familiar with it than many town clerks or small town staff UW extension can also identify specimens and if you take pictures of your tree or your insect much like the woodpecker damage you can often send that to someone like UW extension office here and Mike Ballig the extension agent is here or myself or to the website and we may be able to just take a look at the pictures yes that's EAB or no what's not based on the pictures so that can be a very quick and effective way to make an identification and it turns out that many if not most detections that we make in the communities are actually reported by the homeowner we drive around and look but you greatly outnumber us and we can't get into your backyard as well as you can now one of the issues with emeraldashbore is the decision to treat a tree or will my tree get infested at all this insect only infests the true ash species the white black and the green and the blue if you happen to live in those couple neighborhoods other things like maple or elm or even mountain ash are not true ash species and they are not susceptible so part of the the management of EAB is that identification of your tree because you don't want to cut down your tree or spend money treating your tree when it turns out that it's an elm that's not going to get the insect so proper identification is useful ash is one of the handful of tree species that has opposite branching so sort of like this most tree species here have what's called alternate branching where they're staggered and not opposite each other so if you have say a maple or an elm in your backyard tomorrow take a look and not maple an elm for example you'll see that the branching is alternate and that can be an easy way to screen out your tree species the mature white ash tend to have these diamond shapes in the bark mature green ash is more kind of square or horizontal cracking and the ridges as you can see here kind of look like plates I do have the ash identification brochure from Michigan State which is a very good one on the table so if you have any doubts about what your tree is please take one and try to identify your species commonly people will see these canoe shaped canoe paddle shaped seeds that is fairly distinctive for an ash this is the ash identification guide which I mentioned there's plenty of copies on the table you can also go online and download this off of our state emerald ash borer page there are other eab websites available that also have this link it's a very good one it tells you how to screen your tree species and then it has nice pictures of similar species like a box elder or an elm or a shag bark hickory that have somewhat similar leaves but having a nice picture makes it pretty easy for you just to show you ash leaves here are the green, white and black ash they have a number of smaller leaflets so this whole thing is actually the leaf these are not technically individual leaves and they vary but 5 to 9 is most common black ash tends to be most abundant in the wet areas like swamps they probably is planted in some streets or neighborhoods or backyards but more commonly it's a green or a white ash that you'll have in your yard here's another picture of similar leaves notice that some of them like the mountain ash or the walnut just have far more leaflets and the shape is just different when you look at the pictures of the two others like shag bark hickory or box elder may have a similar number of leaflets but the shape is just different so take a look at the guide if you have any questions and it should be fairly straightforward with a little detective work now as a homeowner and we're here tonight to really talk about your trees in your backyard or possibly in your woods you've got several options now that we know that EAB is here some people will spend the money to treat the trees with insecticide every year two or maybe three years and the trees should stay alive and healthy other people will decide that they don't want to spend this money in perpetuity for the next 30 or 40 years and they will just plan to cut the tree down at some point and replant it with another species it's an option you own the tree and the decision is ultimately yours you have different budgets you have different values for that tree and budgets and values vary yes what is the cost of treating it and how effective is it the question is what is the cost of treating and how effective I will show you that in a couple slides the good news is the price is coming down over time as more people do it and there are more products on the market I will one suggestion we do have is that if you decide to cut the tree down you will probably save yourself a fair amount of money if you do it while that ash tree is still alive once ash trees die they get very brittle and very dry and when they fall they just shatter all over the place much more than a live ash tree would which means that it's harder on the equipment it's harder on the tree service and there is more cleanup time involved which means more cost to take that tree down so removing a live ash is usually suggested and most homeowners who know that will take the tree down while it's still alive now some homeowners will do that prior to death other people will wait until the tree dies and then they decide to remove it ash trees tend to start falling apart within a year of death so if it does die be aware that within a year so it will start dropping branches and even the main parts of the main trunk or bark will start falling off but underneath that tree the third option is to treat the tree with insecticide and that's becoming increasingly common I will caution you up front that only ash trees need treatment remember this emerald ash bore only affects ash trees so if you have elm, maple box elder, birch something like that it does not need treatment for this insect because it's not going to get infested in the first place now also something to consider is that not every ash tree needs to be treated or should be treated because it's got major problems anyways and you're better off doing something like removing and replacing versus spending the money to treat it because something else is going to happen to that tree there are some products that you can buy from the owner you can move down to the garden center or the big box retailers here in town and buy some of them or there are other products which tend to be more potent that only a tree service or a licensed arborist can apply because they're called a restricted pesticide that you need special certification and licensing to legally apply so that's another decision for you do you want to do it the homeowner way or the more expensive tree service way it's up to you they all have advantages and disadvantages which I will show you another recommendation that we have been pushing for the last 10 years or so is to diversify your tree species we have a lot of ash in our communities we have a lot of maple in our communities ultimately or eventually some new insect is going to get here because the shipping containers keep coming over here from other continents and the pests keep coming hidden inside them so diversifying your woods or your forest means that if something else gets introduced in five years you've still got four or five or six different tree species there to provide the benefits that your trees are really planted there to do there are a number of examples that you can see here on the screen behind me they're a little more exotic or eccentric than you would have planted even 10 or 20 years ago because we are looking for more and more things to diversify with just like when we have our retirement fund we don't want it all in one stock because the company might go broke and then we're in trouble we want to hedge our bats with a diversified mix of tree species or say stocks in your retirement fund because if one goes bad you've still got the rest of them there there is a very good information site on our state page or a good web page you can go to the state website and get more information about what to plant what's most appropriate for you based on the climate soil type things like that mixing it up is good because more bad stuff is going to get here there are a number of decision guides for you and we've got a couple of them here and as I mentioned a couple minutes ago not every ash tree is going to be saved not every ash tree is worth saving because it's got problems so I borrowed a guide from the Indiana DNR called the Managing Emerald Ash Board Decision Guide which has a very simple step-by-step decision making process for you look at and make a decision about whether you want to treat your ash trees or remove them sooner or later that should be fairly straightforward and you'll see other examples of pictures of trees that are worth saving versus trees that are not worth saving which I'll show you in more detail we do encourage homeowners to consider insecticide treatment for their high value ash trees basically which means the trees in your yard or around your buildings say if you have a property elsewhere anywhere in Sheboygan County at this point or even in the surrounding counties this is something that you should consider this spring now if you have ash trees in your woods you're borrowing 5, 10, 20 acres somewhere else this is really not for you because the cost is just too high relative to the values of those trees typically you would spend in most cases you would spend more treating the trees than you're going to get when that tree is turned into lumber just doesn't make economic sense in forests you manage the forest differently and grow different species just like you mix up the trees as I mentioned a couple slides ago if you do have questions you're a Woodlot owner and you have questions about managing for EAB give us a call here at the Plymouth DNR office we have a forester who many of you may work with for managed forest law or other plans he can give you some advice and if you're looking for basic forest management or bug advice I can talk with you as well now to your answer your question about the insecticide treatments there are a number of different products on the market the number keeps increasing every year as some of them go off patent and you can make a generic version kind of like you can make a generic version of your drugs that you get at the drug store they tend to be a lot cheaper and the price of everything goes down there are a number of products and as the DNR we don't endorse any specific product or insecticide or business we provide the basic information and it's up to you to make the decision of what product to use and to hire someone if you want to hire someone each of you have different situations you have different trees of different sizes they're in different places in the yard some are healthy, some are not so healthy some of your wallets have plenty of money, some not so much it will vary and the decision that you may make is often going to be a different decision than your neighbor would make the probability of success is not 100% guarantee but if it's done properly and at the right time i.e. before the tree is too heavily infested the odds are very good that you will be able to save that tree over the long term the most common products or the active ingredients that you'll see are usually but not exclusively one of these four imitacloprid is a fairly common product and if you go to the garden center or the big box store most of what you'll find has that as the active ingredient it's actually related to the nicotine in cigarettes so if they get a little over stimulated and they die if they get this there is another product or active ingredient called emomectin benzoate which people would most commonly know as an insecticide called triage but there are now several generic varieties as well dinotefuran is another chemical insecticide and as a directin is the active ingredient from the neem tree so if you're looking for something that is more natural there is a product called triazin which contains this it's the only one that I know of that has this neem tree extract and it basically is an extract of an asian tree and then it kills the larvae just like the chemicals would the treatments are required every one to three years depending on which product you buy or you hire someone to apply in general the ones that are applied every year are cheaper and I hear numbers of about four dollars a diameter inch so if you had a 12 inch tree about this big that would cost you roughly two dollars a year to treat the products that last two or three years are more expensive and typically they're about twice the cost but they provide two or three times the period of protection so some people will choose to spend less money more frequently some people will choose to spend more money less frequently and typically most of these products are going to be the ones that are called restricted and you'd have to hire a tree service or an arborist to come in and inject them I do have the homeowner guide on the table it lists a number of insecticides that you can buy the ones that are less harmful if improperly applied are generally the ones that you could go and buy yourself it's something to consider some people will use those only if you start dying in the neighborhood and then they will hire a tree service to use the more potent products some people will go straight to the more potent products it really varies and the decision is up to you I've just attached a sample slide or picture of the typical difference in treatment versus not treatment that you would see what you can see is this was data from another state the trees that were not treated had about 50% decline so they look like that thinning dying tree I showed a dozen slides ago the ones that were treated had some level of dieback but something that a tree can easily handle and most people or homeowners would not even notice whether there's 3 or say even 10% decline most people don't notice that the tree doesn't this is the Insecticide Guide for Homeowners from UW Extension this is the one that's on the table you can also get it online at the UW website if you type an emerald ash borer or go to the state emerald ash borer webpage and download it or take a look at it if you want more I do have extra copies so if you have a neighbor or relative that's interested feel free to take one off the table for them on to tree service insecticide auctions as I mentioned they have products that you can't get your hands on unless you hire them and there are very good reasons for that in terms of safety and the way they're applied we do encourage you to check the qualifications and the pesticide licenses of anyone that you choose to hire EAB has been known to have people come around offering to treat your trees and they're not licensed they have no experience they're not a certified arborist for example they're kind of they're to make a quick buck so check businesses qualifications carefully there are companies here in the Sheboygan area that are able to do these treatments companies from other places like the Fox Valley or Green Bay will come here if you are interested there are also other businesses that you could find under the phone book or look online under say tree service or past control you would find them appear as well yes Joe the city office and verify that business owner is permitted to work in the city now that does not tell you their competency it just means that they do have a permit to work in the city thank you for those watching on public access Joe mentioned that here in the city of Sheboygan the businesses that are applying pesticide need to have a permit from the city so you could call the city and check their legitimacy in terms of having that permit questions yes is there a life cycle that the trees are going to reach that they're going to die anyway the question is about the life cycle of a tree yes trees are organisms that have a finite life cycle and that's one of the things to take into consideration in deciding whether to treat if you've got a big tree that might live another 50 years you may do it you may choose to spend the money if it's already dying and has three more years would you really spend the money to treat it so around that tree 30, 40, 50 years old where do we what would you expect a tree like that to live the general rule of thumb in a city say for a street tree or a park tree that's often about as far as they go in your backyard or out in the woods live another 40, 50 years they can live fairly long if they have a good place to grow but streets and parks are not often good places for them to grow that could be one of several varieties the autumn purple that you were mentioning is common those are varieties of the general the white or the green ash so the stuff that you bought at the nursery or the previous homeowner bought probably is susceptible to this insect so if you value the color for example that may be one thing to consider in treating yes do you know how much it should cost to cut down one tree still alive the question is how much does it cost for a tree that's still alive it varies on quite a number of factors so talk with the tree services and get several estimates because the prices or the quotes may vary substantially I think someone in the back I'll answer your question the question is will the treatments hurt kids or pets done properly they should not most of many of the products are actually drilled or injected right into the tree so there's no real exposure some of them that you buy you mix with water and you soak around the base of the tree and you may or likely will remove some of the leaf litter or the mulch apply the liquid and then cover it back up so there is always a risk of exposure but it should be mitigated some of the products are sprayed right on the tree trunk or on the canopy of the tree there is a higher potential for exposure if you've got kids running or pets running around the yard jumping up on the tree that's been sprayed so that's one thing to consider is that some people may choose to do a more discreet treatment with one product versus spraying with another in the back yes I'll answer the ashtree age question gentlemen there's the blind horse restaurant that's a picture in their restaurant dated 1909 and they had saplings of those three big ashtrees they have in their front yard so that's going on 100 plus years they look very nice and big beautiful ones not the same for every tree another yes you take a tree down the line and you have that stump is that stump still going to be a problem as far as the emerald ash board I notice the city is taking down trees but they're leaving the stumps for public the public access viewers the question is what about the stumps after the trees are cut down you can actually have emerald ash board into the base of the trunk and even into the root system a little ways underground if the eggs are laid on the surface and the larvae just happen to crawl or tunnel down sometimes the property owner or the city will treat the trees with some kind of herbicide to make sure that it dies if they don't they may sprout again and I know I have a co-worker in Michigan who has adult children in the Detroit area the ash trees have long since died but they sprouted back because the tree may have had food reserves underneath the bark so you get these stumps that have sprouted a new forest of ash that is something to consider do you want to treat it or have a stump grinder come in and remove it is the city going to take off the stump? let me ask Joe I was hoping to catch up last year we have Kenny, 400 stumps out there right now? 472 as of today hoping to start in May with providing equipment in May Kenny said we are hoping to start again in May we did a pretty good catch up last year I just want to throw up up until about 2013 the city was not removing more than less than 200 trees a year and then due to numerous things drought and whatever, we've been removing basically about 600 trees a year since so we were on route to catch up last year and then we had that storm and that really really sets us back now again we have a four man crew we are able to give them help for a little while but we are trying to complete that so Kenny, our lead man has a plan we caught up huge last year and we have every intention that by mid summer we should have those the stumps out there completely ground up so those are our responsibility and we will be caught up this year you can hire someone to stump grind as well yes, on your trees yes without the because we don't always know whether they are there if we cut down live trees can we burn the water or give it to our neighbors to burn or are we not supposed to do that is there any error law here like Bill said it's here so the ashtree you remove it especially if it's a good ashtree right now great use it but no the ash the ash board is all around us so it was a big thing before don't bring it anywhere don't burn it just try to figure out how to get rid of it go ahead and burn it you can use it where you remove it if possible try to keep the wood in the city because there are places north of here like Howard's Grove for example Southern Manitowoc County may have the insect but it's not known yet at least if it stays here in the city the risk of spread is pretty negligible because the city already has it if you cut the tree down and want it for firewood that you may move somewhere if you let it sit there for two years the bugs will cycle through and then it's just not suitable anymore so then there's really no risk of moving it but it still has to stay in that red area that I showed you earlier what does the city do with the trees? does it take a lot? that one is not available a lot of our branches will be ground and it's a majority of what makes up a lot of that mulch pile that you'll see at the Department of Public Works municipal service building those are mainly the branches the other pieces that we have we do try to get out different ways we bring them out to one farm at this time I think they'd probably kind of turn around and sell them one of our management plan items is what can we do with this wood how can we better turn this wood around not looking to make a profit or anything maybe though to help offset some expenses but we're going to have a lot more trees coming in now how do we get rid of those trees and that's part of the management plan I don't live here in Sheboygan County so I was just making sure that there isn't some sort of city ordinance against burning because of the winter smoke that's one of the best ways there is to prevent the insects from emerging keep it down here and as you saw on that map that I showed you earlier there's only a few known spots in the north woods so the longer we can keep it out of the north woods the better just to wrap up with the insecticides what you'll see is that some companies will have an injector like this sort of a big needle that puts the pesticide right underneath the bark so there is no potential safe for your dog playing with the pesticide underneath the bark and it sprays and then it gets absorbed through the bark and goes up the tree and kills what's inside and some have a hose and tube system that they kind of pump or pressurize and it gets into the inside of the tree that way so there are companies that have different application methods for the various products and that's something to consider when deciding to hire someone is what am I comfortable with and done properly they should cause minimal damage to the tree because the trees can heal those wounds here's a good picture of the treatment success from a suburb of Detroit the same neighborhood they had been doing some treatments with I believe the imida clovered products the tree on the left was one of the controls that was allowed to naturally be infested and you can see what happened to it the tree on the right was one of the ones that was treated and it's a very nice looking tree so that done properly and early on that is what you should wind up with if you do the treatments yes the question is about the timing of the treatments typically those are done in the spring as the trees start becoming active and they're carrying water up inside the tree you want to put the pesticide in and it gets carried up too so as you'll see on the brochure or that the insecticide handout typically mid April to mid May is when you do most of them some of them can be done in the fall and then the pesticide just sits there all winter until it gets carried up again the following spring yes the question is what is the future of the EAB infestation based upon what we've what we've seen in the other states like Ohio or Michigan that have had this for 20 years probably say here in Sheboygan County it will be a cycle the first wave that we're going to go through in the next 5 to 10 years most you know the vast majority of the trees died and then the next 5 to 10 years you know the vast majority of the trees die the treatment may and this is may be able to be scaled back and done less frequently after that happens but eventually those young little sprouts and seedlings will grow up to be a size that they can get infested again and then probably they will have another wave and whatever is left will start growing again so it probably will be a cycle that you may be able to scale back the treatments and as I had mentioned earlier the 1 to 3 year treatment cycle may be something that you can scale back to a 2 to 4 year cycle but we have to get through this first wave first and long term how how the trees and the bug will kind of interact with each other over the next say 200 years we don't know yet it just hasn't been present long enough other insecticide questions good ok so as I had mentioned earlier some of the trees are worth treating i.e. the tree on the left nice tree in downtown green bay nice looking tree right along the trail no problems worth treating the other tree is not worth treating in that case it was just too far too heavily infested as I was saying if it generally about 30% of the canopy is spinning like this that's really the cutoff to be able to save it beyond that it's too far gone to save trees may also have other problems that make them unlikely candidates for insecticide treatment as you can see it left that tree is unbalanced and eventually it's going to be a big storm and it's going to split so probably it's not worth treating it would make more sense to remove that tree and replant with something else that's not susceptible the tree at the right you can see is going to have perpetual maintenance problems and that would also be an unlikely candidate to treat there's no nobody stopping you from treating if you own those trees but it's something that would be less likely treated and more likely replanted with something else that's better suited for that site and to wrap up the best way to deal with EAB as you can see is not to get it in the first place so please keep the ash down here and don't take it where the bug is not already present so with that I will wrap up and I'll be around for a while as will the city staff if you have any questions if you think of questions in the next while please call it the Plymouth office or ask one of us so with that I will wrap up and thank you for your interest in emerald ash borer