Local officials estimate there are over 60,000 ash trees in Lincoln: 50,000 on private property and roughly 14,000 (probably several thousand have been removed) on public property.  I estimate 1 out of 4 ash trees are potential/logical candidates for protection for EAB.  If you have an ash tree on your property and you are reading this you are probably wanting to keep it, it is probably among the 25%!  Untreated trees should removed soon or enjoyed until their demise is inevitable.  A rational prediction is that significant incidence of canopy decline in ash trees in Lincoln is a year or two away , and widescale tree death will take several more years, and the loss of ALL unprotected trees in 10+ additional years.

A total lack of understanding of the EAB phenomenon prevails in Lincoln as it has in other communities as the bug started spreading from the Great Lakes region 20 years ago.  It may be that initial methods of protecting trees 20 years ago were unsuccessful and this led to a general lack of trust in treatment methods, but treatment methods have improved dramatically since then.  The current gold standard in treatment only attained that status approximately 10 years ago.

Rationales for poor local understanding of the EAB phenomenon are as follows:

1: A threat of this nature only occurs once every several human generations.  For all intents and purposes a non-native pest arriving in the urban forest is a once in a lifetime or less than once in a lifetime occurrence.  The public tends to have no familiarity with such phenomenon.

2: Public officials are relied upon for information about EAB–but, public officials in locales like Lincoln have their own distinct problem with regards to EAB since Lincoln is a locale where public officials play a role in the Lincoln urban forest.  The goals for a “forest” are not the same as for a single ash tree in your lawn.

3: Tree service providers are relied upon for information about EAB–but they tend to manifest most of their expertise in the largely mechanical process of trimming and removing trees, vehicles to get to the job, and maintaining a staff–not in “plant health.” It is far safer for a tree service operator to announce that a tree will die some day than to delve into the myriad of nuanced treatment options.

4: Self-fulfilling prophecy, confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, etc.  Sometimes it’s easier to pretend a problem doesn’t exist, especially when everybody else is also too lazy to figure it out.  Psychologists have a variety of theories for such happenstances in human intellect we all look into from time to time.

5: Lack of correct methods used by proclaimed “professionals.”  Probably half of all “professional” interactions with the public to protect ash trees from EAB will have no affect on protecting ash trees from EAB.  Saying you can protect a tree and protecting a tree are not the same thing.  City of Lincoln code requires licensing of for-hire tree services, and the state of Nebraska requires licensing of for-hire pesticide application.  Many offering EAB services do not have one or both of these licenses.  Following the laws in place is a good start for this type of work of course.  Just because somebody who didn’t know how to fix a problem failed to fix a problem, doesn’t mean the problem can’t be fixed.  Plant health care in the 2020’s is not a simple/non-intellectual undertaking.  Like just about everything else, the technologies that exist keep getting better from one decade to the next.  The well-studied plant health care arborist isn’t exactly showing up in a Model T.

Many of Lincoln’s ash trees are part of a trend of too late adoption with regard to treatments and this will translate to reduced success rates.   Underlying this shortcoming is the incorrect strategy of waiting for damage before commencing treatment.  Additionally, many ash are entering the EAB window with pre-existing damage from other boring insects.  A lack of conductivity of the pesticide in borer-weakened vascular tissues (be it from EAB or the other less invasive native borers) is similar to the problem of trying to drink through a straw with holes in it.  The very powerful insecticide can only protect the tree to the degree that it can flow throughout the tree–if we give the insect a head start we are fighting an uphill battle.

Thank you for reviewing the information on this site.  If you have ANY questions or comments I hope you will give me, Will Frerichs, a ring to discuss.  Call or text anytime at 402-476-0499.

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