'Brutal little pest'

Sandy Bressner – sbressner@kcchronicle.com City of Geneva tree worker Clint Bowgren trims a tree from a lift basket along Glengarry Drive Thursday morning. The city has been on the lookout for Emerald Ash Borers this season.

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Scott Haines has been monitoring the spread of the little green insects for the last three years.

And Haines, Batavia's superintendent of streets, suspects that the worst of the damage inflicted by the emerald ash borer may still lie ahead.

"We're not seeing huge numbers right now in this city," Haines said. "But I expect to see that change in the next two years or so."

Since 2006, city foresters and arborists in Kane County have monitored the spread of the emerald ash borer.

The tiny green beetles, about a half-inch long, since the early years of this decade have emerged as one of the leading threats to trees in the Great Lakes region.

Since 2002, the ash borer, a native of far east Asia, has spread out from an area near Detroit, Mich., to most surrounding states and into Canada, leaving tens of millions of dead or stricken ash trees in its wake.

The trees are killed not by the adult beetles, but rather by the larvae, which burrow into the tree's vascular system to feed, effectively cutting off the tree's ability to circulate nutrients.

First seen in Kane County in ash trees near Lily Lake three years ago, the insect now has been found in ash trees throughout central and southern Kane County, including in every quadrant of the Tri-Cities, officials said.

In St. Charles, the ash borer has ravaged hundreds of trees, said Assistant Director of Public Works Richard Gallas. In the last year, city workers have removed about 400 of the city's 5,400 ash trees to slow the insect's spread and rid the city of dead or dying trees.

About three dozen ash trees alone were removed from the streets in front of the DuKane Corporation facility at Kirk Road and DuKane Drive earlier this summer, said DuKane spokesman Christopher Cudworth.

"As best as we can tell, the city did a very thorough and good job with it," Cudworth said. "For us, as a corporation, it's not a big thing.

"But I can tell you if this had been at my house, it would have been very difficult to watch."

Geneva and Batavia also have removed ash trees this year. Officials in those cities said they've removed about 40 ash trees along city streets already this year, with plans to do more as infested trees are discovered.

In Batavia, Haines said his office also sent letters to another 25 private property owners, advising them to remove trees infested with the ash borer.

"There could be anywhere from one to 25 ash trees on a piece of property with this bug," Haines said.

In all, ash trees account for 20 to 25 percent of the trees in the Tri-Cities, officials estimate.

City officials said they are following the advice of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, which recommends the removal of ash trees infested with the borer.

But a growing number of tree care services are springing up with products they claim can slow ash borer or even prevent infestation in an ash tree.

Local businessman Jim Toth, who runs a lawn care business, said demand for an emerald ash borer preventative has grown so large he will focus exclusively on injecting trees with products now on the market that claim to resist emerald ash borer for up to two years.

"People are really getting fed up with these cities that just want to cut down the trees," Toth said. "And these products really do work, without the need for spraying those terrible insecticides all over the place."

His business will now be known as Tree Doc, to reflect his commitment to the injection products.

At Best Tree Care in St. Charles, owner Tom Picinelli said his company also has transitioned to tree injections.

"In the spring, our arborist was real busy, but he felt like a mortician, the bearer of bad news," Picinelli said. "There were a lot of lost causes out there."

Gallas said the city of St. Charles will begin experimenting with the injections.

"We're taking a limited approach," Gallas said. "There are some mixed results with some of these products and we want to see how they do before we broaden our horizons, so to speak."

Regardless of the results of the insecticide injections, however, all agreed that the emerald ash borer problem will likely only expand.

"This thing has given us all headaches," Picinelli said. "It's a brutal, little pest."