Morning Read: Can New Yorkers stop the Emerald ash borer?
The Associated Press’s George Walsh, via the Burlington Free Press, is exploring New York’s strategies for halting the spread of the wildly destructive ash borer — an invasive bug from Asia — that has ravaged whole forests from Michigan to western New York.
He describes Crown Point resident Nanette Pelkey’s shock when she was stopped at a checkpoint and busted for carrying a small load of firewood in her trunk.
“I put six — six — pieces of wood in the back of my car,” Pelkey said, something she readily admitted when asked by an officer at an Adirondack Mountains intersection busy with folks heading to camps on a Friday evening. “I had never, ever heard of that whole thing. My husband had heard of it, but I packed the car.”
Experts say this is one of the reasons that stopping invasives is so tough: It’s not just about forcing the shipping industry, say, to toughen ballast water standards on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
It requires the knowledge, and cooperation, of millions of average citizens. People have to be willing to check their speed boats for weed fragments before putting them in the water of a new lake. They have to carefully clean their angling gear.
They have to not buy foreign garden or aquarium plants that could go viral.
The reality is that if you view invasive species collectively as a disease spreading over the planet, humans are the most common vectors.
So what do you think? Is it inevitable that we’ll soon be living with Emerald ash borers, creek snot, and dozens of other new, aggressive critters? Or can we stop the invasion?
Tags: environment
Do not expect much from the Coast Guard as they have been expected to act before with creation of a national standard and policy, but have only delayed any meaningful action in order to follow a plan of international economic shipping interest,the IMO along with their dilution is the solution plan. It will take a President to instruct Congress to create comprehensive ballast water legislation to fix all the national security issues ballast water poses. Legislation is needed authorizing the Coast Guard to carry out a mission with a set goal and quick time line in order to create meaningful protection. A program requiring mandatory installation of technology to kill bacteria and virus needs to begin now. Unfortunately because of our lack of leadership allowing the continued free pass to foreign ships to pollute our waters,supplying cheap manufactured goods supplied to our largest employers, retailers, may create better job numbers with more low paying service jobs in an election year. Sadly the problem of ballast water is interlaced, not only with Americans health and environment, but also with large business that have foreign economic interest promoting global economic growth as the path to create American jobs and unfortunately most American politicians indorse this policy for money to run. Reality is, jobs are created where it is cheapest and to continue to insure that foreign ships bring foreign goods into our country can do it cheaply without expensive technology instalation to protect our health and environment will insure continued jobs as store clerks to sell foreign products in our country as Americans largest employment oppertunity.
You don’t even mention the people who just don’t care or are just plain stupid who will happily release invasives. Or garden centers and catalogues that will sell plants to places where they just don’t belong. People who release their aquarium pets into lakes when they become too large for the tank. Snakes. Reptiles…
If the Asian Carp debacle is any indication, we are doomed! There is no will to close the gates on a canal in Chicago that is the last chance to keep the carp out of the entire Great Lakes Basin because, God forbid, it might hamper commerce. So here we are, sacrificing the entire Great Lakes ecosystem because it might cost a few bucks to keep this menace out long enough to figure out how to control it. I read the other day that the Army Corps of Engineers, (who, by the way, promised that their electrified underwater fence would keep it out), announced that substantial evidence now exists that the Asian Carp has breached the barrier. We don’t have the will to stop invasive species … it might cause inconvenience!
Is there any real data that shows that firewood is the source of the spread? The ban makes sense but it seems like all we are doing is focusing on this ban that may just be window dressing. What is the DEC’s plan when the EAB is found in the Adirondacks? Clear-cutting swaths around where they find the bug has proven to stop it in some places. Are we prepared to do this? Brian, do you have a link for the DEC’s plan? I have seen nothing substantive with the exception of lots of press on “don’t move firewood”.
The beetle got here in a wooden pallet from what I understand. Are we sure we even have our eye on the ball?
I have to agree with the previous posters. There is no hope – none whatsoever- of stopping invasives if we rely solely on individual people or businesses willingly following the recommended guidelines.
The only hope – and it is slim at best – is that some biological means such as mass sterilization of a species or introduction of predator species will slow or stop the spread. But that is a long shot fraught with its own risks.
Since the ban has been in place I haven’t been taking my own firewood when I go camping but I think the total ban is a bit of overkill. According to websites about the Emerald Ash Borer it feeds only on Ash trees yet they are banning transport of all firewood including the seasoned maple I have in a wood pile left over from the Ice Storm of ’98. That seems to me like using a sledgehammer to drive a finishing nail.
As for ‘will we lose the war against invasive species?’, I predict the answer is yes. Whether or not we are to blame for their introduction, the climate is changing in ways that are more conducive to them flourishing and less favorable to native species. It would be nice to keep things the way they were but I think it is already to late to stop most of these things just like it was too late for the Chestnut trees and the Elms. The human desire for stasis is no match for nature’s impulse for growth and change.
It can be slowed though.
In the long-run, Entropy is an unstoppable Universal Force.
The cost and effort of preventing movement of things can only go up.
Maybe there’s another tree that can replace the threatened Ash?
While I share some of the pessimism expressed in the above posts regarding the inevitability of the spread of invasive species, I do think education and PR campaigns can help spread awareness and perhaps minimize or slow the spread. Perhaps the press could provide some – please let there be some -examples of instances when effects of invasive species were contained, reversed, or stopped.
We need to get government out of our lives.
I’ve lost a lot of my Ash trees in the past 2 years. I’m told we “don’t have” Emerald Ash Borers here in my area, but there are other Ash Borers that we do have. Either way I’ve been checking the holes for the signs of the Emerald AB. Nothing conclusive yet either way. I guess I’ll have to catch the little bugger alive. There is also something damaging our Maples and Apples, a sort of fungus on the Cedars and of course we have Cormorants to contend with, Late Blight in tomatoes and potatoes, a new onion and garlic pest…a whole mess of stuff.
Nature is always moving.
The ash was introduced in cities such as Detroit to replace the elm.
The maple tree and a host of other trees will soon be under attack by the Asian long-horned beetle.
We can thank the St. Lawrence Seaway for both the emerald ash borer, the Asian long-horned beetle, the sea lamprey and many more invasives.
Carry on boys and girls, in the name of the god money, we can wreck this planet and ourselves.
The firewood ban may be useful but it seems like the state needs to keep their eye on the ball. The AEB did not come to this country in a pile of firewood. As I understand it it probably came in a wooden pallet.
What is the DEC plan? I have only seen some info on what could be done nothing on what will be done. As best I can tell the only “action” is a ban on moving firewood, which may or may not have anything to do with the spread of the beetle.
In some states they have shown that clear cutting around an area where the beetle is found can stop the spread. Is NYS prepared to do this? Can they do this when it is found on Forest Preserve land in the Adirondacks. Would they do it?
…Purple traps, lots and lots of purple traps….
One more reason that the State should not purchase any more land that they will be prohibited from protecting…
Cutting is the preferred control. Can’t be done in the Forest Preserve. Against a State Constitutional regulation.