After first showing up in this country about a decade ago, the emerald ash borer has decimated thousands of trees in Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent,
The destructive beetle is moving to another food source.
Windsor’s forestry manager, Bill Roesel, says he’s noticed it another type of ash tree.
“We've noticed it hitting our blue ash, which we thought were resistant.”
Roesel says the pest leaves “d” shape holes and tunnels in a tree’s trunk, and is impossible to remove once inside the tree.
Nearly 90,000 trees were cut down in Chatham-Kent in effort to create a so-called ash free zone and prevent a further spread of the borer to the rest of the province in 2005.
Mike Vince, a resident who lived near the zone, says it was an exercise in futility. “Cutting them all out was a mistake; you could have had some that were naturally resistant, for whatever reason we don't understand.”
Vince’s hobby is trees and he’s worried the borer will move onto other species.
Windsor offers free tree inspections and will decide if it should be taken down.
They will replace the tree free of charge as long as it’s on city property.
Blue ash trees have square shaped twigs.
Signs of an infestation include number of woodpeckers on your tree and small sprouts developing around the base of the trunk.
