WASHINGTON, DC – Like Dutch Elm Disease and the Chestnut blight that obliterated forest trees during the middle of the last century, experts say an exotic emerald ash borer beetle from Asia is expected to completely obliterate New York’s ash trees.
And now, federal funding set up to help control invasive species in the forest could become obsolete.
Last week, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer announced his opposition to suggested House budget cuts, saying in a press release they could exacerbate upstate New York’s growing ash borer problem. Already, counties from Erie and Monroe to Ulster are under quarantine.
Experts fear the borers could sweep across the state and infect new areas by the end of the summer.
The industry supports nearly 50,000 jobs in New York, and $1.5 billion in payroll. According to Schumer’s office, forest-based manufacturing workers in the Southern Tier have already been laid off, thanks in part to the infestation. Fourteen Southern Tier businesses and 215 million trees here are at risk.
The House budget proposal slashes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service budget by $73 million, which includes a $37 million cut to the Plant Health program, and slices $354 million from agriculture research programs.
Schumer is urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to provide sufficient funds to fight invasive species in the face of proposed cuts in the House budget that would make fighting the emerald ash borer infestation much more difficult.
“Unless we fight back, New York’s Ash trees and the industries and jobs they support could vanish,” he said in a conference call to reporters yesterday.
Back in 2008, a Cornell Cooperative Extension forester for Broome and Chenango counties told a Chenango County committee of supervisors to prepare for the infestation. He predicted state regulators would quarantine ash here by 2013, and said local municipalities should be prepared to clean up the devastation after it occurs at a predicted cost of about $1,000 to remove an affected tree from a residential area.
The bright green beetle, first discovered in North America in Michigan in 2002, eats out the center of a tree’s trunk and limbs and kills a tree within two to four years. It was first found in Cattaraugus County in 2009.
Being designated as a quarantined county means limits the intrastate movement of ash trees, lumber, any product containing ash, firewood of any species, wood chips, bark mulch, and other products. Moving firewood has become such a deadly threat to forests that regulators in some state have instituted fines and even jail for moving ash firewood out of a quarantined area.
“It makes no sense to tie one hand behind our back as we fight the emerald ash borer infestation, but that’s exactly what these shortsighted cuts would do,” said Schumer. “You wouldn’t use a fly swatter with a gaping hole in the middle of it, but that’s essentially what we would be left with. This tiny bug has the potential to devastate an industry that employs thousands of Upstate New Yorkers. I strongly oppose these cuts in funding that would hurt our ability to keep the emerald ash borer at bay, and keep Upstate New York jobs safe. I’m going to fight hard for funding in the Senate, and do everything I can to protect the ash trees that are a key part of our economy.”
More than 70 million ash trees in 13 Midwestern states and Pennsylvania, as well as many in southern Ontario in Canada have already been destroyed by this deadly pest.
Ash grows best in wide open landscapes and has already suffered from the crowded, Civil War-era forests that dominate 60 percent of Broome and Chenango counties. The tent and Eastern caterpillar also threatens ash and other tree species in the forest.