Country Corner
By Steve Fairchild

A gnawing truth
Emerald ash borer is a sign of future invasions

The ash tree in front of the farmhouse was something of Norman Rockwell. It stood 30 feet tall and pitched shade over half the yard. About 10 feet up the trunk, a major branch pushed out horizontally. Resting on it were a couple partial sheets of plywood with a few two-by-fours jammed underneath at odd angles for support. And just off one side of the platform, hanging from a higher branch, was a thick jute rope knotted every so often. It was a classic Midwestern tree house. And it was a favorite haunt of mine.

That tree was an example of why ash trees are so popular in this region. They have a decent life span, give good shade, keep a nice shape and generally make agreeable companions for yards.

Of course, the old ash I’ve just described died about 25 years ago—victim of its ripeness in age and a colony of carpenter ants. Today’s Midwestern ash trees face much different and more inglorious fate. They are falling victim to the emerald ash borer, a rising star on that expanding list of imported and invasive pests.

Whether you tend to animals or crops—or trees—you’re plenty familiar with the fact that things from someplace else keep putting new threats on your livelihood: soybean aphids, soybean rust, new weeds, fish, bugs, diseases and the rest. Arrival of invasive species runs at parallel pace as rising world trade.

The thing is, it isn’t going to get any better. With a barrel of oil at the mid-$140s, container vessels still trawled the world’s oceans. We’re in a global economy. And our thirst for imports won’t soon be slaked. Nor should it.

We can lament the chaos of it all, but does the African exotic flower grower who is exporting a local resource to a hungry world market share our lament? He does not. Same for the nursery in China that delivered boxwoods with soybean aphids aboard.

Trade also favors the Midwestern beef or pork producer who is selling more high-valued beef into developing markets—the strength of those markets being one of the things keeping his industry from crashing against the breakers of high grain prices.

Despite the best efforts by hardworking folks at APHIS, our phytosanitary efforts don’t reach their desired effects. And where do you suppose that agency’s funding ranks compared to what we’ve allocated to keep nastier things out of the country—things like heroin or people who’d like to blow up some of our nicer architecture while we’re in it?

Soft-bellied bugs on the bottom of your soybean leaves just won’t raise the general alarm enough for increased funding or vigilance.

We should keep up the fight against invasives, of course, but we must also accept that we will lose many of the battles. Who likes our odds against Zebra mussels, quagga mussels, Asian long horned beetles, gypsy moths or common teasel? Perhaps we can learn to manage these pests, but they are here to stay.

When Asian soybean aphids showed up in this country I wrote a rant of an editorial about battening down the hatches, tightening phytosanitary rules and giving the Chinese a bit of hell for dumping all that infested boxwood on us. Less than a decade later, those words seem quaint.

As much as our trade patterns and demographics will change from a shrinking world, our biota will too. And we must learn to adapt.

To keep the modern anti-trade enthusiast honest, we must remember that it isn’t always slack inspection or blundering that brings woe to our fields and farms. Don’t forget the intentional introduction of sericea lespedeza, Reed canary grass, the indomitable multiflower rose and the curse of The Delta, kudzu. There have been plenty of ill-considered intentional introductions of birds and other animals.

Just track the genetics of Midwest feral hogs to find some Russian ancestry due to the release of Russian boars for sport hunting.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t be killing emerald ash borer. By all means, let’s make paste out of the shiny little things. Let us pay close attention to quarantined forests and restrictions on moving wood. Let’s keep our ash trees as long as we can.

But we’d better plan on fighting all of these new invasive pests with defensive hybridization, beneficial predators, biotechnology and the whole of what human intelligence can muster, because they will keep arriving.

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