A tiny insect from Asia has the potential to cause big problems for landowners and homeowners in Louisiana. The emerald ash borer was discovered recently in Webster Parish near Shongaloo, according to Wood Johnson, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service. It’s probably already in other Northern Louisiana parishes, as it continues its slow spread across the country.
A quarantine is likely to be imposed soon to ban the movement of wood from ash trees out of Webster Parish, Johnson reported March 17 at the Central Louisiana Forestry Forum organized by the LSU AgCenter.
Veronica Mosgrove, press secretary for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, said the LDAF is in the initial stages of providing the USDA with a quarantine for review. That quarantine will encompass Webster Parish only and should be in place in early to mid-April. After the quarantine is officially declared, the quarantine could become larger if EAB is found in other parts of the state. Statewide visual and trap surveys will be conducted beginning in April.
First identified in 2002 near Detroit, the wood-boring beetle is believed to have caught a ride to the United States in the mid-1990s on wooden pallets or crates. Now confirmed in at least 25 states, the insect primarily attacks and kills North American ash trees, but has recently been found infesting white fringe trees, commonly called grancy graybeards. Near its epicenter, the infestation has wiped out about 99 percent of ash trees.
“It’s a devastating pest,” Johnson said. “The numbers are in the hundreds of millions of trees. Ash isn’t like pine or oak, but it’s out there. When you tally it up over 25 U.S. states, it comes out to a lot of trees.”
From The Shreveport Times: https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2015/03/26/invasive-asian-bug-mean-trouble-louisiana/70502548/