Kane County Cutting 100 Infested Trees

from the Chicago Tribune

By William Presecky, Tribune reporter

Work crews with the Kane County Forest Preserve District this week began cutting and burning dozens of trees infested with the voracious emerald ash borer, a tree-killing insect plaguing much of the Chicago region.

Removal of the 100 ash trees, concentrated near the entrance to Campton Forest Preserve on Town Hall Road south of Wasco, is expected to be completed by Friday, said Drew Ullberg, the district's director of natural resources.

The work comes ahead of an April 30 deadline, when all culling has to cease until fall because of the spring emergence of ash borer larvae. The preserve is more than a mile from where Illinois Department of Agriculture officials first found the beetles in the state in June 2006.

Ullberg said the infested trees are part of a 20-year-old planting that was heavily struck by the pests.

"This is the only [Kane] preserve where we have to do this drastic cut right now. Other preserves are infested, but the trees haven't shown the real signs like the ones deteriorating in Campton, which have been infested for several years now and have reached a threshold point," he said.

Wood from the trees could not be salvaged, Ullberg said.

Since first being discovered in Kane County nearly two years ago, several other infestations have turned up along Lake Michigan in north Cook County; near Peru, Ill., in LaSalle County; and at Concord Green shopping center in Glendale Heights.

Under the state's ash quarantine, established in July 2006 in southern Kane and expanded to include 18 northeast Illinois counties, people cannot remove from the quarantine area live emerald ash borers; ash trees or branches; any cut, non-coniferous firewood; ash wood or bark chips larger than an inch in diameter in two dimensions; ash logs with the bark or sapwood still attached; or any item made from ash trees that could be harboring live ash borers. A federal quarantine includes the entire state.

For more information about the emerald ash borer and eradication programs, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Web page, http://www.emeraldashborer.info ; or Morton Arboretum's Web site, http://www.mortonarb.org .