British Expatriate Network

Heard of it?

It's a sparkly green bug the size of a pinhead that kills ash trees. It was imported to the US (Detroit) via a wooden pallet from Asia, and now it's killing all our ash trees.

Currently the boffins are trying to find out how far it has spread, then they will draw a wide circle outside that area and cut down all the ash trees in that circle to try and stop the bug spreading further. In my opinion it won't work -there are signs posted on every road as you leave the area telling you not to take firewood out of the area. Yeah right. Here it's almost mandatory to go out of your way to disobey such signs, plus almost everyone in the affected area who can afford to drives up north for weekends and vacations and takes their campfire wood with them as it's so expensive when you get there. I hope I'm wrong and it does work.

I post about this because Ann Arbor is beautiful in the fall. The name may give you the hint that it's a city full of trees. But this year the effects of the emerald ash borer are so obvious. There are huge spaces where majestic trees stood last year. There are huge bare trees, even though the leaves haven't really started to fall. And they sky seems closer. One thing I love about living here is the huge trees. It appears most of those were ash. They skyline is different as I drive through the city. Suddenly I can see the rooftops of the cookie-cutter neighborhoods instead of the glimpses of window throught the forest of tree trunks.

I hope they stop it before it gets to you. It's ugly.

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That sounds pretty alarming monster, i have to agree nature has a very fast way
of multiplying/destroying things etc. most things are shipped in to a country
[unknowingly] where the animals/bugs soon adapt to their environment....

I know the african bees dont destroy things but look at the way they've grown
en masse over the years and still you get "scientists" saying, we have new ways of
controlling them, which is about as good as saying lets scoop the water out of
new orleans using a ladel...the saying "flogging a dead horse" springs to mind..

That reminds me of Dutch Elm Disease
that caused a lot of damage too.

That is so sad. Like you, Monster, I love the trees and it breaks my heart to see people chopping them down just because they can't be bothered with the leaves in the fall. But to have them destroyed and no one can really do anything to stop it is very sad. We have some type of bug here that came from Asia and eats our trees. Some type of beetle I think. I get the impression, though, that it has been around for a while now.

One big difference between what is happening with the ash trees and the bees is the unintentional way it was introduced. the bees were brought here for breeding purposes and it wasn't until it was too late to stop them that the scientists discovered how destructive the bees are (you would think they would have learnt their lesson by this point after other aniimals that have been introduced into foreign countries!). Even if they can't stop this bug, at least they may be able to slow its progress down. I hope so, anyway.