Some In New England Unhappy With End Of Emerald Ash Borer Quarantine

The emerald ash borer beetle sits on leaf. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Flickr

The U.S. government has lifted a quarantine on an invasive insect, the emerald ash borer, that’s killed many trees in Massachusetts and Connecticut. But critics of the change have been more vocal outside those states.

The emerald ash borer was first discovered in the U.S. in 2002 in Michigan. The federal government soon instituted a quarantine there on ash products, which restricted their movement unless the wood had been treated first.

The quarantine zone spread as the bug infested more states — and with good reason. The insect can kill ash trees within three to five years, according to Tawny Simisky, an entomologist at UMass Amherst.

“Adults will lay their eggs on the bark, and those eggs will hatch, and the larvae will bore beneath the bark and feed in the nutrient rich layer,” she said. “And so it’s that feeding that causes tunneling — which will effectively girdle the ash trees, that leads to their mortality.”

In 2012, the emerald ash borer was found in the Berkshires and in Connecticut near Waterbury. It had spread to 31 states by 2018, including all of New England.

Read the rest of the story at NEPM’s website.