Scott Kleven hasn't yet conducted a survey to come up with an actual percentage, but he maybe doesn't need to because he already knows: Crookston is home to a lot of ash trees, so if the emerald ash borer makes its way to northwestern Minnesota, a lot of trees could be lost locally.
"It is a dismal diagnosis for the trees that are infected," the director of Crookston Parks & Recreation said. "Removal appears to be the only solution at this time."
If there is a silver lining to any of this, Kleven said, it's that cities have been hearing about the imminent, ominous arrival of the emerald ash borer for years and, as a result in Crookston, he said the city stopped planting ash trees on boulevards in 2005. But in the years prior to that, the city switched to ash trees in the wake of the Dutch elm disease breakout that rid boulevards of hundreds of mature, infested elms.
The ash-killing beetle was discovered in Minnesota last month. It's been concentrated, so far, to a single neighborhood in St. Paul, and crews have been cutting down and shredding ash trees there. Officials figure the beetle's spread to other cities in Minnesota is all but imminent.
"The public is asked not to transport ash firewood around the state but that is a difficult thing to enforce to try to keep it localized," said Kleven, who coordinates the city's tree-planting program.
A Department of Natural Resources survey from 2006 found that in cities across the state, more than half of their trees are ash. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, however, the percentage is significantly smaller.
Cities aren't completely defenseless when it comes to battling the emerald ash borer, but the battle is expensive and budgets are extremely tight. So, once a tree is infected, the typical response is to take it down as soon as possible.
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Scott Kleven hasn't yet conducted a survey to come up with an actual percentage, but he maybe doesn't need to because he already knows: Crookston is home to a lot of ash trees, so if the emerald ash borer makes its way to northwestern Minnesota, a lot of trees could be lost locally.
"It is a dismal diagnosis for the trees that are infected," the director of Crookston Parks & Recreation said. "Removal appears to be the only solution at this time."
If there is a silver lining to any of this, Kleven said, it's that cities have been hearing about the imminent, ominous arrival of the emerald ash borer for years and, as a result in Crookston, he said the city stopped planting ash trees on boulevards in 2005. But in the years prior to that, the city switched to ash trees in the wake of the Dutch elm disease breakout that rid boulevards of hundreds of mature, infested elms.
The ash-killing beetle was discovered in Minnesota last month. It's been concentrated, so far, to a single neighborhood in St. Paul, and crews have been cutting down and shredding ash trees there. Officials figure the beetle's spread to other cities in Minnesota is all but imminent.
"The public is asked not to transport ash firewood around the state but that is a difficult thing to enforce to try to keep it localized," said Kleven, who coordinates the city's tree-planting program.
A Department of Natural Resources survey from 2006 found that in cities across the state, more than half of their trees are ash. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, however, the percentage is significantly smaller.
Cities aren't completely defenseless when it comes to battling the emerald ash borer, but the battle is expensive and budgets are extremely tight. So, once a tree is infected, the typical response is to take it down as soon as possible.
