GREAT OUTDOORS: On windy days, remain alert for 'ash snap'

Until recently, ash trees accounted for approximately 10% of Ohio's living woodlot species. Where water tables are higher, it is a good bet that many of our local wet woods, stream bottoms and ditch banks contained even higher percentages. Ever since Chinese businesses thoughtlessly shipped Emerald ash borer (EAB) larvae into North America within wood crates and packing material, this destructive insect has spread to more than 35 eastern U.S. states and Canadian provinces. First documented in 2002 near Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, EABs spread to northwest Ohio, then throughout the state while curiously following our state and federal highway routes. Although mature adult EABs can fly up to a couple of miles to colonize new territory by depositing eggs onto the bark of a new ash tree, larvae were widely distributed in harvested logs by those willfully disobedient of state timber quarantine orders, sold in infected nursery tree shipments and carried by ignorant campers moving infested firewood. Loads of camp firewood were commonly transported while plainly visible in the beds of pickup trucks or hidden in luggage bays of motor homes en route to local campgrounds. In fact, some of the region's first distressed ash trees that indicated new infestations were discovered in the woods next to a marina campground, ODNR state parks on the islands, and in wood lots adjacent to highway rest stops. Once these insect pests infest an ash tree, it is doomed without timely, regular, expensive insecticide treatments. In Ohio, an estimated 4 billion native Fraxinus family ash trees have been killed, including the locally common White, Green, Black, Blue and Pumpkin (ash) species. Once they infest an ash tree, it takes about 6-8 years to kill it by weakening it from the cumulative effects of many larval EAB trails made through their phloem tissue under the bark. These frass-filled (sawdust-looking waste) tunnels block the exchange of nutrition produced in the leaves by photosynthesis down to the roots and water from the roots to the rest of the tree. The upper portion of the tree succumbs first from lack of water and begins to die back. To compensate, the lower portion of the tree begins to produce many new sprouts and "suckers" surround the trunk. The upper dying limbs are the first to become brittle and prone to "ash snap," named specifically for the frequency of their collapse. As precaution, many of the ash trees that could pose a danger to visitors were felled in Ohio's state parks and offered free to those who would finish cutting them up and haul them away. While some cities initially chose to try to save their trees, most opted to cut them down due to misgivings of adding this permanent expense to their budgets, especially without any certainty of success. The Ohio State University Extension writes that fungi, especially turkey tail, slowly consume and destabilize the base of the trees which can cause them to topple without warning years after they die. Watch for splits in the trunk, missing bark, discoloration and fungi as indicators of weakness. Mass synchronized mortality occurs on average about 10-15 years after the trees die, which for many of our regional woodlots matches the timeframe of the EAB infestation. Other regions of the state will seeash snap a little later. There is an elevated risk for people traveling under such trees while engaged in recreational or occupational activities such as hunting, fishing, mushrooming, birdwatching, trail riding, hiking, landscaping or harvesting firewood. Loggers call detached or hanging dead limbs and snapped treetops "widow-makers" for obvious reasons. Injuries from trees include blunt force injuries to the head, broken bones, becoming impaled by sharp limbs plummeting downward or being crushed by whole trees -- the latter occurring in a few cases while inside automobiles. Sunday's roaring winds provided a timely reminder for those spending time outdoors to remain vigilant for disintegrating ash trees. Look up and scan the canopy before preceding into woody areas and avoid affected areas during moderate- to high-wind events.