City takes steps in stemming EAB presence; more work ahead

Yahoo

15-03-2025

Mar. 14—On Thursday morning, along a portion of Seventh Avenue SE, the long arm of a Sennebogen reached up to top of an ash tree, gripped it and with the saw attached at the end shored it off and brought it to ground level.
It was one of three ash trees a crew from Carr's Tree Service was cutting down at the particular location and one of many that are coming down in the city's approach to the emerald ash borer infestation.
The city contracted with Carr's to take down 325 trees in this first round and so far Jason Sehon, director of Austin's Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department, said they are about halfway through.
Still it represents a small portion of the work done so far and the work that lays ahead.
"We just had a bid opening last week for an additional 400 trees with the option of extending it to 600 trees if the city and the contractor come to a mutual agreement on a cost," Sehon said. "Hopefully that will put us at 925 trees that will be removed by the end of 2025 per contract."
Between the contracted work and work by city crews, around 1,200 trees have been removed from city-owned land.
"I do want to give a shout out to our streets crew," Sehon said. "They are great at keeping busy. Not a lot of snow this year so they stepped up and removed a ton of trees along the Cedar River."
Just in case March 2020 wasn't bad enough, it was also when the emerald ash borer was officially confirmed in Mower County, becoming the 23rd county in Minnesota to report an infestation, though it was likely EAB was here prior to that.
Originally from Asia, the wood-boring beetle is particularly damaging to ash trees as larvae. After eggs are laid in the bark of the tree, the hatched larvae will burrow into the tree beneath the bark, making it difficult to detect.
Blonding, where the outer bark is removed by increased woodpecker activity and new sprouts lower down on the trunk are advanced indications a tree is infected. Once the tree gets to a certain point, the tree can become dangerous because of how brittle the branches of the tree become.
However, as the city originally looked at the intimidating task of taking down the trees, one of the more prevalent species of trees in the community, it began looking at a treat first option in March of 2024 in an effort to save as many trees as possible.
In the spring of 2024, more than 450 trees were treated in Austin, with the hope that property owners might do the same thing.
"I do want to remind the community that this comes off the tails of our treat now campaign," Sehon said.
Aside from being able to keep the trees up for the benefit of the community, in delaying taking down the trees, it diminishes the burden of the city to cut down so many at once as well as delaying spread of EAB.
"It's still worth the investment because it might buy us a couple of years for the removal because it will stop further infestation," Sehon said. "(Some) trees were in a lot worse shape than what we were expecting and we'll see more this year I believe."
While crews have been able to move some trees from needing to be cut down to treatable, however, the reverse has also been true with some trees looking like at first they could be treated, but ultimately were found to be beyond help.
Crews won't know for sure just how much variation there could be this year yet until leaf-out.
At the same time, treatment first comes with its own hurdles. Namely, the effort required.
"We planted several trees last year and we'll plant some more this year, but we have to find the resources to water the trees in need," Sehon said. "That's why we're encouraging residents to plant trees, because they have the resources right there to plant, water and care for trees for the first three, four years of their life."
To help bolster that effort, Sehon said that Parks and Recreation is gearing up to at some point launch an Adopt a Boulevard Tree Program where in the city will plant a tree on a boulevard, setting them up with the watering bag, and the property owner would agree to water the tree.
"That could be one way that we put more trees in boulevards," Sehon said.
The city hosted free tree planting workshops in 2024, with plans for even more this year as well as the city's Forestry Team partnering with Austin High School's Go Green Club to help foster that idea of planting more.
"The city continues to encourage residents to plant trees as they likely have more readily available resources to water and care for young trees," Sehon said.