Updates

Ash Extinction Project Update, Spring 2024

An unravelling force is surging through the woodlands of Franklin Chthonics.  The progress of the emerald ash borer is astounding.  The ancient presence of ash trees in our region and on this continent is passing in a moment, like a magic trick.  Although we knew that the borer was present everywhere in our vicinity, we had not conclusively identified damage from the emerald ash borer to our ash trees through 2021; our first confirmation came in June 2022.  One year later, the impact of the borer was visible in many ash trees around the tract.  Our first actual sighting of a tiny, metallic green adult borer occurred last July 16.  Pictured at right is our prisoner, though its capture represents no kind of victory.

The goals of the Ash Extinction Project are twofold; first, we wish to raise awareness of this extinction event by documenting and publicizing its unfolding in one place. Second, we hope to preserve a community of woodland ash into an indefinite future.  We have only just begun making progress towards the first goal, but the more time-sensitive project of protecting cohorts of ash trees has gone well over the past two years.  It appears that all 100+ trees we injected with emamectin benzoate two summers ago are, so far, effectively resisting the borer and appear healthy.  This is particularly encouraging given that some of the treated ash were definitely infested by the EAB before treatment.  We added another twenty trees to this to our group of inoculated trees in 2023, mainly young trees that seem healthy and have good sun exposure. 

A couple of other experiments with techniques that might finesse the EAB are in early days but show hopeful results.  Small groups of ash were cut last year to produce coppicing and pollarding forms of the tree.  Coppicing involves cutting at the base of the trunk at the correct time of year, which puts the resources of the root system into growing a thicket of shoots from around the cut base of its trunk.  Pollarding involves cutting a tree a couple of yards from the base, putting new growth into clusters of branches above the grazing height of deer and other smaller animals.  The possibility here is that neither the trunk nor the new growth will provide suitable sites for the emerald ash borer to invade the tree.  These processes can be repeated every several years and sustained indefinitely, at least in theory.  Preliminary results from these experiments seem to favor pollarding over coppicing, if only because of the risk of animal grazing on the coppiced specimens. Additional pollarding is scheduled for spring 2024.

The other important event of the past year was the cutting of over 500 of the largest ash trees at FC by commercial foresters.  It is our hope that thousands of additional ash trees can be harvested as firewood or as material for other useful purposes.  Even so, we will have to  leave thousands of ash to the borer, with the knowledge that these trees will literally crumble within two or three years, presenting a real danger to any people near them.  We are gradually removing ash trees that have not been inoculated from high traffic areas.

This process of removal is also gradually building a considerable amount of ash firewood.  Ash actually makes fantastic firewood; its straight grain and ring-porous structure allows it to be split straight and easily.  Though it is not really advisable, ash is so dry in its living state that it actually can be burned green, without seasoning.  We have learned that ash is the wood of choice for use in pizza ovens, and we are investigating how we might supply pizzerias with oven wood to help support our efforts to preserve ash and to deal with the catastrophic mess generated by its destruction.

Please consider making a contribution to the ongoing survival of one or more of these trees.  Treatment is not a one-time event but will have to continue, every several years, for decades, forever.  Realistically, this project will require the participation of a community dedicated to defending and honoring a noble life-form doomed by human activity.

If you have any gift for publicity or networking with organizations engaged in environmental preservation, we would also deeply appreciate your help in regards to this project.  Participants in our current group are not strong in these skills.  The Ash Extinction Project might offer individuals a rare opportunity to resist the Anthropocene extinction event we are witnessing, rather than merely bemoan it.