The Trump Administration’s proposal to lift the quarantine of the emerald ash borer (EAB) is ill advised. The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle that came to the United States in 2002 from Asia. The insect lays its eggs in the bark of ash trees. The larvae then live and eat under bark of the ash trees until they fully mature. The larvae eventually kill the ash trees from the inside. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the insect can found anywhere in the United States from Massachusetts to Colorado. While the entire range of the EAB isn’t clearly known, the federal quarantine is thought to contain or slow the westward expansion of the EAB so that we have a better understanding of the EAB’s general location.
Removing the quarantine would allow the EAB to spread throughout the United States with very little knowledge of its movements. While the government says that it will control the EAB through the use of biological measures, these are not likely to be effective. The USDA stated that their biological controls would consist of practices such as introducing parasitic wasps and biological agents that would supposedly interrupt the EAB’s life cycle. However, their controls would do nothing to control the spread of the insect because they would not have small, specific regions to treat. If the quarantine were to be removed, the EAB would be able to spread easily across the country. The cost of treatment would then be incredibly high because the USDA would be responsible for treating every Ash Tree across the nation. Should the EAB be allowed to spread outside of the old quarantine boundaries at their natural pace, all of our native ash trees would be at an enormous risk. The New York Times cited a study conducted by a U.S. Forest Service Entomologist that stated that the United States would lose up to 99% of its ash trees due to the EAB. In order to protect our remaining ash trees, we must keep the quarantine in place to slow the EAB’s spread until a better solution has been found.
Adding insult to injury, the removal of the quarantine appears monetarily motivated—an effort by the Trump Administration to appease the timber industry. Critically, the proposed changes to the existing regulation do not examine the damaging ecological effects of the EAB—in fact, the USDA did not undertake either an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement to assess the potential impacts of its proposal. By removing the quarantine, costs of labor in lumber mills would decrease by a few million dollars annually, according to the proposed regulation. Lumber mills would be able to put less time and resources into searching ash wood for the beetle before the wood is moved to different areas. Much more would be lost if we were to lose all of our ash trees to the EAB: not just lumber, but all the ecosystem services provided by the ash trees.
It seems that the government is proposing this regulation because they are throwing in the towel on the EAB fight. Additionally, I doubt that a nationwide application of a biological control would be inexpensive to implement—but the USDA proposal does not address the cost of implementation of their biological controls. The public comments on the proposed regulation change that would lift the quarantine make clear the opposition of state governments throughout the ESB’s known range and (perhaps even more vigorously) the western states where EAB has not yet been observed. (All comments on the proposed regulation change are available here). For example, the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources stated that, “Without active management, it is predicted that EAB will severely decimate populations of ash trees in the state. As of 2014, ash forests in Pennsylvania have been reduced by 12 percent.” Not only would we lose billions of ash trees, but we would also lose the species that rely on the trees to survive. A study completed in the journal Biological Invasions found that there are 43 different native species that use the ash tree to survive. Most of those species are insects that are integral in the food chain. We must oppose the regulation that would enable the EAB to cause massive damage to our beautiful North American ash trees and the forests in which they live.