Webcast to help prepare for insects

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By Alma Gaul | Monday, March 12, 2007 12:00 AM CDT | () comments

A Webcast to help prepare the Quad-City area for an outbreak of insects that kill ash trees will be 9 to 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the Iowa State University-Scott County Extension office, 875 Tanglefoot Lane, Bettendorf.

The program about the emerald ash borer, or EAB for short, is aimed at city managers, county government workers, arborists, nursery and landscape personnel, news media representatives and urban/rural forestry workers.

“The information we plan on delivering during this program will help get these persons thinking about what we need to do to prepare for the outbreak of EAB so we are not taken off-guard,” said Mark Shour, an Iowa State insect specialist.

The program will cover topics such as borer identification, its life cycle and current locations, the Iowa resources that are threatened, foreseeable regulatory actions and legal implications of the borer in Iowa, key components of borer response, response strategies of impacted stakeholders and 10 ways to prepare for the borer’s arrival.

The program is sponsored by ISU Extension’s Pest Management and the Environment Program, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources/Forestry Bureau, and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship/State Entomologist’s Office.

To register or for more information, call the extension service at (563) 359-7577.

If you cannot attend, the program will be archived for a later showing.

If you have any questions about the program, contact Shour at (515) 294-1101.

The borer inched closer to the Quad-Cities last summer with the June discovery of several infestations in suburban Chicago.

The borer, a foreign native first identified in the United States during 2002, has already killed more than 10 million ash trees in Michigan and has cropped up in Ohio and Indiana. Removal already has cost tens of millions of dollars, burdening both taxpayers and individual homeowners.

An estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the landscape trees in the Quad-Cities are ash.

In November, a federal quarantine meant to limit the spread of the borer was imposed in Illinois, prohibiting the movement of all untreated hardwood firewood outside the state, as well as the use of live ash trees for landscaping.

The borer has not been found in Iowa, and a statewide scouting program aims to keep on top of the situation.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (515) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.