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Emerald Ash Borer

   

Image 1 Close-up showing the Emerald Ash Borer and the tunnels it makes in infected trees.

The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is a tiny green beetle that has killed millions of ash trees in the United States since 2002. Virginia
entomologists, foresters, arborists, and Extension agents have been on alert for this pest since 2003, when more than 200 infested trees in Fairfax County had to be removed. Because pesticides cannot effectively control the EAB, removal of the affected trees is usually the only way to control its spread.

Adria Bordas, agriculture and natural resources Extension agent in Fairfax, has been educating those who work in the landscape, horticulture, and forestry industries about the EAB and its threat to the county’s trees. “We want to be sure that anyone who might come in contact with ash trees is knowledgeable about the EAB and the symptoms of infestation,” says Bordas.

That educational effort paid off last summer when a Bartlett Tree Experts employee, Josh Darkow, was working for a homeowner’s association in the Newington neighborhood. Darkow had attended one of Bordas’ training sessions on pest management where the EAB was discussed.

“Josh called me from the job site and said he thought he might be seeing evidence of EAB in the ash trees he was working on,” says Jeremy Hager, a certified arborist at Bartlett. “I called Adria because I knew she would know what to do.”

It turned out that the insect was the EAB, and Darkow’s alert helped mobilize the network of state and federal agencies that identified and managed the infestation.

   

image 2 Adria Bordas, Extension agent, and Jeremy Hager, certified arborist at Bartlett Tree Experts, examine ash trees in Fairfax County.


Eric Day, manager of Virginia Tech’s Insect Identification Laboratory, went to the site the next day to collect specimens for positive identification by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. “The insect had probably been present for four or five years in this area,” Day notes. “There were close to 20 ash trees in the neighborhood: some of them were still healthy, some of them were already dead, and many more were in various stages of infestation.”

The trees were removed, and Extension efforts to educate the public about the EAB are continuing in Fairfax County and the surrounding areas.