Emerald Ash Borer Management in Boulder, CO: four years after the find
Kathleen Alexander, City Forester, Boulder CO
Author
04/10/2017
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Description
Emerald ash borer (EAB) was first discovered in Boulder in 2013. This session will cover how Boulder has responded to the infestation during the past four years. The discussion will cover what they though worked best and what they might have changed.
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- [00:00:00.451]Well, good morning.
- [00:00:01.284]As Graham mentioned, yes, we found emerald ash borer
- [00:00:03.039]in September of 2013, the same month that we had
- [00:00:06.432]sort of our catastrophic flood in Boulder County.
- [00:00:10.487]I've been City Forester there for about 20 years,
- [00:00:13.957]or I've been working for the city for about 20 years,
- [00:00:16.032]forester for about 12 of those.
- [00:00:18.539]So you'll see, I like a lot of pictures.
- [00:00:21.538]I tend to go through the slides pretty quickly.
- [00:00:24.857]I know they're recording this,
- [00:00:25.869]but if any of you want a copy of the slideshow
- [00:00:27.647]or want to use any of the pictures, just contact me.
- [00:00:29.725]I'm happy to share anything that you see here today.
- [00:00:35.159]Just some background about forestry in Colorado.
- [00:00:39.257]We have probably fewer than 10 species that are native
- [00:00:43.254]to the actual urban Boulder area.
- [00:00:46.335]So, that makes it rather challenging to grow trees there.
- [00:00:49.636]These are some photos from the late 1800s
- [00:00:53.183]and then sort of the matching photos from today.
- [00:00:55.904]So you can see how many trees have been planted,
- [00:00:57.748]how many trees have also become naturalized
- [00:00:59.803]during that time period.
- [00:01:03.385]I've actually given talks just entitled,
- [00:01:05.785]It's not easy being a tree in Colorado!
- [00:01:08.628]We are so challenged with the severe weather events.
- [00:01:12.543]I mean, Graham mentioned drought and flood.
- [00:01:14.942]I mean, we had a serious drought back in 2002.
- [00:01:18.391]I would definitely bet that a lot of our trees
- [00:01:21.252]are still suffering lingering impacts
- [00:01:23.428]dating back to that 2002 drought.
- [00:01:26.061]We've also had the 2013 flood.
- [00:01:28.776]We have, Boulder is sort of known for its wind.
- [00:01:32.373]It's not unusual to have 70, 80 mile per hour
- [00:01:34.975]wind gusts in Boulder.
- [00:01:37.890]And then that upper right photo,
- [00:01:39.548]that's actually in November of 2014.
- [00:01:42.651]We had a severe temperature fluctuation.
- [00:01:45.497]The temperature dropped from a high of 63
- [00:01:47.684]to a low of 11 below zero in 36 hours,
- [00:01:51.309]so just over the past couple of years,
- [00:01:52.963]we've had to remove over 500 dead standing Siberian elms.
- [00:01:57.657]And then last Spring, March 23rd of last year,
- [00:02:00.366]we had 26 inches of snow,
- [00:02:02.737]and the trees were already starting to leaf out,
- [00:02:05.361]so mother nature has not exactly gotten our EAB memo,
- [00:02:08.872]that we need to be proactive here.
- [00:02:11.789]It's like just an example that EAB,
- [00:02:14.023]even though it's so time consuming,
- [00:02:15.946]unfortunately it's not the one thing that you can focus on.
- [00:02:20.644]We also have some unique challenges
- [00:02:22.298]for our ash trees in Colorado.
- [00:02:24.877]We also have late spring freezes.
- [00:02:28.496]Here are some photos taken in Denver
- [00:02:30.476]from 2012 and 2013.
- [00:02:32.196]You can see the difference in the trees.
- [00:02:34.770]On May 3, 2013,
- [00:02:36.930]it went down to 13 degrees,
- [00:02:39.780]and the ash trees are always the species hardest hit
- [00:02:43.365]by those late spring freezes.
- [00:02:45.557]Ash bark beetle populations just exploded after that,
- [00:02:50.079]which is just sort of made for the perfect storm
- [00:02:52.128]with emerald ash borer.
- [00:02:53.619]We've also been dealing with lilac/ash borer for
- [00:02:57.470]decades
- [00:02:58.732]in Colorado.
- [00:03:00.092]So our ash trees already look pretty bad.
- [00:03:03.367]To quote Rob Davis, our Denver City forester, he's like,
- [00:03:06.196]"We already have so many crappy looking ash trees."
- [00:03:09.998]A few weeks ago, my son and I were in Minneapolis for
- [00:03:13.623]I have to admit the Frozen Faceoff.
- [00:03:14.945]We're huge hockey fans.
- [00:03:17.941]Driving around Omaha now,
- [00:03:19.897]I mean, you guys actually have trees that look like trees.
- [00:03:23.726]If you come to Colorado and drive through
- [00:03:25.322]some of our urban forests there, our trees,
- [00:03:28.632]a lot of these ash look like this.
- [00:03:30.642]These ash actually don't have emerald ash borer.
- [00:03:33.643]These trees are suffering from some of the other problems.
- [00:03:38.465]Unfortunately, we have way too many ash trees in Colorado.
- [00:03:43.042]There was a 2013 study that the US Forest Service had done
- [00:03:46.915]that estimated the total number of trees
- [00:03:49.315]for each of the 29 Denver Metro communities.
- [00:03:53.580]Rob Davis and I said, well, let's just assume 15% ash
- [00:03:58.149]across the board.
- [00:04:00.478]A staggering figure of 1.45 million ash trees
- [00:04:04.095]in Denver Metro alone.
- [00:04:06.843]So you can imagine along the front range
- [00:04:08.985]what that would give us.
- [00:04:10.839]In Boulder, that would give us over 70,000 ash trees.
- [00:04:15.109]You'd think, how can that be?
- [00:04:17.182]The green ash is completely naturalized in Boulder
- [00:04:20.152]along all of our creeks and ditches.
- [00:04:21.887]And so when you start counting up stems,
- [00:04:24.061]it's probably not too far
- [00:04:25.492]outside of the realm of possibility.
- [00:04:28.462]There was a recent Fort Collins study that looked at
- [00:04:32.443]the urban tree canopy.
- [00:04:34.700]They actually said that Fort Collins,
- [00:04:36.725]when they did these plots around town,
- [00:04:39.129]had 15% ash on both public and private property
- [00:04:42.851]when you look at the number of stems.
- [00:04:45.583]But that translated
- [00:04:47.216]to 33% of their urban tree canopy.
- [00:04:50.644]Because ash is a large maturing tree
- [00:04:53.137]and it has such a large tree canopy.
- [00:04:56.023]In Boulder, when we sort of did the math,
- [00:04:58.038]if we had about 12%,
- [00:04:59.731]that means ash makes up about 26%
- [00:05:02.398]of our urban tree canopy that's at risk
- [00:05:05.092]just from this one insect.
- [00:05:08.385]What have we really done about it?
- [00:05:12.550]It would be a bit misleading to just say
- [00:05:15.429]we in Boulder have done all the work
- [00:05:18.453]because in Colorado,
- [00:05:20.434]we are very, very, very lucky.
- [00:05:22.967]I mean, I feel so fortunate.
- [00:05:24.752]We have excellent multi-agency collaboration
- [00:05:28.843]and we have
- [00:05:30.003]for decades,
- [00:05:31.666]I mean going back to the 1980s,
- [00:05:33.442]it all started when a group of Denver Metro foresters
- [00:05:35.771]got together and formed what they called FRUFC
- [00:05:39.338]or the Front Range Urban Forestry Council.
- [00:05:43.390]That sort of grew into the Colorado Tree Coalition
- [00:05:46.168]which is a non-profit in the state,
- [00:05:48.030]looking at urban forestry.
- [00:05:50.327]Then in 2009, we actually formed what we called
- [00:05:54.169]EPIC or the Emerging Pests in Colorado working group.
- [00:05:57.955]We formed this because of
- [00:05:59.291]thousand cankers disease of walnut.
- [00:06:01.756]We have found thousand cankers in Boulder.
- [00:06:05.101]We were really the first.
- [00:06:06.424]We were sort of ground zero for it.
- [00:06:08.564]We don't really know how to manage it.
- [00:06:11.484]We formed this group
- [00:06:12.964]and what we wanted to do was use thousand cankers disease
- [00:06:15.764]as a test case for emerald ash borer
- [00:06:18.012]'cause we didn't have too many walnuts.
- [00:06:19.644]It wasn't that big of an issue for us.
- [00:06:22.492]But we knew that emerald ash borer would be.
- [00:06:25.302]What we did was we brought together
- [00:06:26.675]all these different agencies
- [00:06:28.681]and one of the main goals was just to figure out
- [00:06:30.910]what each other would do
- [00:06:32.568]when emerald ash borer came to the state.
- [00:06:35.631]One of the main things that came out of this group
- [00:06:38.023]was we actually drafted up over on the right there
- [00:06:40.800]a state response plan for emerald ash borer.
- [00:06:44.376]I know you can't see it,
- [00:06:45.329]but the date in the upper corner of that,
- [00:06:47.909]we actually released it in August of 2013,
- [00:06:51.345]which was the month before we found emerald ash borer.
- [00:06:55.364]When my staff person called and said,
- [00:06:58.242]I think we found emerald ash borer,
- [00:07:00.737]I knew who to call with APHIS
- [00:07:03.217]and I knew exactly what was going to happen,
- [00:07:06.124]all those steps that would be involved in the process.
- [00:07:10.347]Once we found it, APHIS came in as they do
- [00:07:13.974]in many other locations and declared it an incident
- [00:07:17.577]and instituted the ICS structure,
- [00:07:19.604]the incident command structure.
- [00:07:22.740]The Colorado EAB response team really grew out of that.
- [00:07:27.295]Because it was really only "incident"
- [00:07:29.997]for the first six months or so.
- [00:07:32.149]But you could see a lot of the same groups
- [00:07:34.341]working together on this.
- [00:07:36.581]One of the great things about this was
- [00:07:39.441]the coordinated initial response.
- [00:07:42.317]All of the news releases that went out
- [00:07:44.023]had all of our logos on it.
- [00:07:47.162]We had sort of a common talking points.
- [00:07:50.868]All of those media request that came in,
- [00:07:53.127]because we were the first ones in the West,
- [00:07:54.956]we received hundreds of media requests.
- [00:07:57.839]I mean, everything from journalism students at CU
- [00:08:00.945]to like
- [00:08:02.166]NPR
- [00:08:03.185]in Al-Jazeera.
- [00:08:04.065]I've never even heard of some of these media outlets before.
- [00:08:07.443]Wanted to know what does it feel like
- [00:08:08.765]to have emerald ash borer now.
- [00:08:11.016]What was great was I didn't have to do all of that
- [00:08:13.200]by myself.
- [00:08:14.530]Members of the EAB response team were able to share in that.
- [00:08:20.343]Our Urban Forestry Division,
- [00:08:23.543]Boulder overall, we've heard all the jokes,
- [00:08:27.218]the Republic of Boulder and the
- [00:08:29.870]sort of 25 square miles of fantasy
- [00:08:32.648]surrounded by reality and all of that.
- [00:08:35.641]One of the great things about Boulder
- [00:08:37.409]is they really do have a commitment
- [00:08:39.393]to environmental integrity and stewardship
- [00:08:42.890]which generally speaking translates pretty well
- [00:08:45.464]for forestry.
- [00:08:48.438]It can be challenging at times.
- [00:08:50.791]For example, we have a pesticide ban on city property
- [00:08:54.804]just because of the concern over pesticide use.
- [00:08:57.591]We are allowed to use pesticides
- [00:08:59.333]but we have to go through a very rigorous and transparent
- [00:09:01.853]exemption process.
- [00:09:04.718]You can see here, we maintain just over 50,000 trees total.
- [00:09:09.022]We have a pretty diverse forest.
- [00:09:10.354]Our soils are a little bit better than elsewhere
- [00:09:12.450]along the front range.
- [00:09:14.423]You can see our budget here.
- [00:09:16.198]It comes from several different sources
- [00:09:17.985]both general fund,
- [00:09:19.722]we also have a dedicated .25 sales tax
- [00:09:22.367]through the Parks and Rec Department.
- [00:09:24.781]Forestry in Boulder is under Parks and Rec.
- [00:09:27.754]Then they've decided to fund our emerald ash borer
- [00:09:30.423]through capital rather than operating expenses.
- [00:09:34.896]Then there are five of us;
- [00:09:36.098]myself and then four field foresters.
- [00:09:39.631]We have about 6,000 ash.
- [00:09:42.387]Those are primarily, if you look at the pictures
- [00:09:44.261]in street rights of way and city parks,
- [00:09:47.086]but then as I mentioned, green ash is completely naturalized
- [00:09:50.132]along all of our creeks and ditches.
- [00:09:52.576]In that photo, every stem that you see there is ash,
- [00:09:56.221]and that's pretty common.
- [00:09:58.220]A lot of those ash,
- [00:09:59.696]some of those areas are under city jurisdiction and
- [00:10:05.185]I don't really know what we're gonna do in those areas.
- [00:10:08.276]That's one of the challenges that we have sort of
- [00:10:11.938]awaiting us.
- [00:10:13.955]How do we find the EAB?
- [00:10:15.787]We found it,
- [00:10:17.678]I supposed you could say because we were looking for it.
- [00:10:20.020]But we were also just really lucky.
- [00:10:23.222]When it was found in Kansas City in 2012
- [00:10:26.257]and they had said,
- [00:10:27.090]it's probably been there for at least five years,
- [00:10:30.002]I thought there's no way it's not in Colorado.
- [00:10:33.040]We just need to come up with a way to actually detect it.
- [00:10:37.841]What we did was we changed our monitoring protocols
- [00:10:40.876]so that any ash, rather than just putting them
- [00:10:43.071]on general removal contracts,
- [00:10:45.150]we actually said we're going to go out
- [00:10:47.419]and sample those trees prior to removal.
- [00:10:52.040]The lucky part comes in and that the first ash
- [00:10:55.100]that we pulled off a general removal contract
- [00:10:57.701]engaged to our IPM person to go out and sample,
- [00:11:00.427]she found emerald ash borer.
- [00:11:03.872]It was a dead ash.
- [00:11:05.667]She walked up to it, literally sprayed
- [00:11:09.589]X on the trunk of the tree to mark it for removal
- [00:11:12.404]and it sort of highlighted little D-shaped exit holes
- [00:11:15.285]in the trunk of the tree.
- [00:11:18.419]Didn't even have to really get up and sample it at all.
- [00:11:22.063]One of the first things we did was
- [00:11:24.016]a delimitation survey.
- [00:11:26.023]Because we were the first ones in the West,
- [00:11:27.788]no one knew how far it had spread.
- [00:11:29.722]Was it all over Boulder?
- [00:11:30.779]Had it spread to Longmont?
- [00:11:33.550]Again, a great multi-agency collaborative effort here.
- [00:11:38.132]There were 15 different federal state
- [00:11:40.327]and city agencies that came to Boulder to help
- [00:11:42.633]with the survey.
- [00:11:44.448]What we found, those red highlighted grids sort of,
- [00:11:48.510]we detected emerald ash borer
- [00:11:50.440]straight through the center of Boulder.
- [00:11:52.686]Pretty much we knew it was everywhere.
- [00:11:55.507]I mean, from what we heard, we knew it was everywhere.
- [00:12:01.236]Since that time, this is sort of a wild slide but,
- [00:12:04.923]it's everywhere.
- [00:12:06.169]I mean, I don't even know how else to say it but
- [00:12:09.968]we have found symptomatic trees in the
- [00:12:12.777]3 1/2 years basically since we detected it
- [00:12:15.861]throughout Boulder.
- [00:12:19.459]One of the, I suppose,
- [00:12:20.884]things that I would change in hindsight
- [00:12:24.476]is our messaging, going back to the first detection
- [00:12:27.973]in Boulder.
- [00:12:29.607]I wish we had just said, it's in Boulder,
- [00:12:32.501]the entire city's infested.
- [00:12:34.905]Instead, we actually invested time,
- [00:12:37.219]and we were sort of told to do this,
- [00:12:39.546]invest time in continuing to monitor for it.
- [00:12:42.959]So you can see the color changes on that map
- [00:12:45.475]represent the years that we detected it in other grids.
- [00:12:49.368]But it really,
- [00:12:50.667]I mean we knew it was already throughout Boulder,
- [00:12:54.031]and it made for some confusing messaging
- [00:12:56.821]I think for the public as well.
- [00:13:00.194]What does it look like there?
- [00:13:02.590]People have told us it looks a little bit
- [00:13:04.046]different in Colorado than it does in the Midwest.
- [00:13:07.236]But I mean, what we looked for first
- [00:13:09.178]is a distinct color change in the trees.
- [00:13:12.536]Early fall coloration basically.
- [00:13:14.765]These photos were taken at like late July, August timeframe
- [00:13:18.240]and you could see the limey color
- [00:13:20.636]up at the top of the trees.
- [00:13:22.688]The next season, the trees don't leaf out fully.
- [00:13:25.868]Their severe crown thinness, the little leaflets,
- [00:13:29.443]which progresses pretty quickly
- [00:13:30.930]through that same growing season
- [00:13:32.210]to big areas of dieback in the tree.
- [00:13:35.167]Then right before the trees die,
- [00:13:36.679]it's just a lot of mid-crown sprouting in there.
- [00:13:40.398]In Colorado, we don't get the trees
- [00:13:41.904]sprouting from the base,
- [00:13:43.453]the way they do in the Midwest.
- [00:13:45.176]It's all mid-crown sprouting.
- [00:13:47.665]How do we differentiate this
- [00:13:49.088]from some of the other problems that we see?
- [00:13:51.673]It's really how fast the symptoms progress.
- [00:13:55.323]We actually see these symptoms progress
- [00:13:58.067]over the course of like a year, a year and a half in a tree.
- [00:14:01.782]Then John had mentioned the woodpecker damage.
- [00:14:04.241]There are some really happy woodpeckers around now
- [00:14:07.407]because of emerald ash borer.
- [00:14:09.021]We have the downy and hairy woodpeckers
- [00:14:10.719]and you can see the damage that they do to those trees.
- [00:14:17.590]I think one of the things that we did best in Boulder
- [00:14:21.252]was how we actually developed our EAB strategy.
- [00:14:25.169]When we first detected it,
- [00:14:26.703]we literally had people calling us,
- [00:14:28.563]yelling at us on the telephone saying
- [00:14:32.176]let all the ash trees die.
- [00:14:33.507]You can't use pesticides.
- [00:14:34.986]We don't want more pesticides used.
- [00:14:37.443]But we also had people calling
- [00:14:39.609]crying on the telephone saying
- [00:14:41.964]you can't let our public ash trees die.
- [00:14:45.804]What we did was was we said, time out,
- [00:14:48.308]we need to take a breath.
- [00:14:49.655]We're going to take our time in developing a strategy.
- [00:14:52.832]We're not going to come out right away and say
- [00:14:54.638]we're doing this or not doing that.
- [00:14:57.527]It actually took us two years.
- [00:14:59.810]We did treatments in the meantime
- [00:15:01.912]but we said we're going to treat a minimal number of trees
- [00:15:04.163]until we roll out a strategy.
- [00:15:06.449]We actually took time to learn from others.
- [00:15:09.994]We called researchers and other city foresters
- [00:15:12.620]across the Midwest,
- [00:15:14.514]learned what we could.
- [00:15:16.015]We also educated the public during that time.
- [00:15:19.751]One of the most successful outreach strategies
- [00:15:23.392]I think that we had done was the HOA meetings.
- [00:15:26.525]Actually going in and talking to home owners
- [00:15:29.253]and showing the maps of the all of the ash trees
- [00:15:31.628]within their neighborhood
- [00:15:33.388]I think made a big difference.
- [00:15:35.369]By 2015, when we went to city council
- [00:15:38.654]with our proposed strategy, they were fully supportive
- [00:15:42.235]because the public was also backing us at that time
- [00:15:45.457]because they got it.
- [00:15:46.632]They understood it by that time.
- [00:15:49.553]Then also, that last bullet,
- [00:15:51.835]we told council rather than going back
- [00:15:53.915]with just an EAB management plan,
- [00:15:56.436]we actually wanted to do a bigger
- [00:15:58.510]sort of picture look at the forest
- [00:16:01.142]and actually do an urban forest strategic plan
- [00:16:03.633]rather than just an EAB specific plan.
- [00:16:07.858]By delaying that planning process,
- [00:16:10.274]it also gave us time to update our inventory.
- [00:16:12.892]'Cause our inventory was about 15 years old at that time.
- [00:16:16.815]And at that time it showed that we had about 17% ash,
- [00:16:20.405]but we knew we hadn't been planting ash,
- [00:16:22.790]we've been actively removing some ash.
- [00:16:25.533]So, we had time to actually update the inventory
- [00:16:28.929]and it was invaluable.
- [00:16:30.195]I mean, it gave us loads of information
- [00:16:32.375]about what our cost would be moving forward
- [00:16:34.911]for emerald ash borer.
- [00:16:38.736]The focus
- [00:16:40.087]of our plan is really tree planting.
- [00:16:43.152]I mean we know that we're gonna be losing a lot of
- [00:16:45.206]our urban tree canopy.
- [00:16:46.588]We have to replace those trees.
- [00:16:48.458]So over the past three years, we planted about 1,600 trees.
- [00:16:53.575]We know that the planting numbers are gonna decrease
- [00:16:56.430]moving forward as the number of removals go up,
- [00:16:59.248]just, it's a budget issue and a time issue
- [00:17:02.930]constraint.
- [00:17:04.335]We've also seen prices increasing for tree stock
- [00:17:07.450]throughout Colorado
- [00:17:09.183]and the demand has been increasing.
- [00:17:13.727]The supply however has been decreasing
- [00:17:16.036]and part of that's emerald ash borer related
- [00:17:18.103]but the nursery folks are also telling us
- [00:17:19.804]it's going back to that 2007, 2008 recession
- [00:17:23.364]that we have had as well.
- [00:17:25.812]We're planting about 35 to 40
- [00:17:27.869]different tree species annually
- [00:17:30.290]and we're trying to commit to planting
- [00:17:32.522]at least 90% of those as large maturing trees just
- [00:17:36.257]to sort of get the biggest bang for the buck
- [00:17:37.647]with the tree canopy.
- [00:17:40.452]Pesticide treatments, our goals,
- [00:17:42.814]pretty much the same as any other community
- [00:17:45.101]across the Midwest; trying to slow it down.
- [00:17:48.784]What we said was we were gonna treat 25%
- [00:17:51.637]of our ash population or about 1,500 trees long term
- [00:17:55.262]on a three-year rotation using the TREE-age
- [00:17:58.083]or the emamectin benzoate,
- [00:17:59.664]one of the trunk-injected pesticides.
- [00:18:03.116]One thing we did was we did notify
- [00:18:06.173]all of those adjacent home owners
- [00:18:08.186]that we were gonna be treating their trees
- [00:18:10.098]and we gave them the option.
- [00:18:12.196]We told them they can opt out of the treatment.
- [00:18:15.200]Then we tracked all those numbers.
- [00:18:17.734]What we found was that very few people opted out
- [00:18:20.750]of the treatments.
- [00:18:23.089]I think in 2015, we sent out like 437
- [00:18:26.947]letters to homeowners.
- [00:18:28.282]35 of those opted out of treatment
- [00:18:31.427]but only 10 of those were because
- [00:18:33.599]they were opposed to the use of pesticides.
- [00:18:37.770]When we went to council, it was clear that yes,
- [00:18:40.191]people were concerned about the use of pesticides
- [00:18:42.891]but their love of their trees
- [00:18:45.059]I think sort of outweighed their concern
- [00:18:47.187]over the use of the pesticides there.
- [00:18:50.597]The criteria for treatment,
- [00:18:51.994]we have very strict criteria.
- [00:18:53.866]We are not treating any trees
- [00:18:54.882]less than 10 inches in diameter.
- [00:18:56.558]They have to be in good condition,
- [00:18:58.445]not under power lines.
- [00:19:00.209]Then someone had asked earlier about the effectiveness.
- [00:19:03.369]That bottom photo is a treated tree
- [00:19:05.844]right next to an untreated tree.
- [00:19:07.826]So we are seeing very good effectiveness with
- [00:19:11.968]the emamectin benzoate.
- [00:19:15.267]Tree removals,
- [00:19:16.882]we know we have to remove a whole lot of trees.
- [00:19:18.949]If we're only treating 1,400
- [00:19:20.215]that means we're gonna have at least 4,500 to remove.
- [00:19:23.470]We expect it to occur over the next few years.
- [00:19:26.278]Unfortunately we're behind on the removals
- [00:19:28.453]because we've been dealing with
- [00:19:30.295]all of the other things mother nature has thrown at us
- [00:19:32.369]the past couple of years.
- [00:19:33.552]The dead Siberian elms.
- [00:19:37.516]I mean, this, how are we gonna keep up with it?
- [00:19:39.993]I'm not really sure.
- [00:19:41.812]It does seem though that
- [00:19:44.225]it's not really blowing up as quickly
- [00:19:46.833]as we were expecting it to and I think
- [00:19:50.094]John Ball earlier made a good point to me that
- [00:19:54.453]in
- [00:19:55.806]Detroit, for example, and parts of Michigan and Ohio,
- [00:19:59.241]the pest was there for a long time
- [00:20:01.042]before anyone even knew what they were dealing with.
- [00:20:03.503]Relatively speaking, we found it fairly early
- [00:20:07.440]in the process.
- [00:20:08.781]So it's given us a little bit more time I think
- [00:20:12.244]to plan and to react.
- [00:20:14.879]We are starting to see the rows of ash dying.
- [00:20:18.366]Sort of some of those iconic photos
- [00:20:19.874]from the Midwest that you see.
- [00:20:21.927]Although we really haven't had time to get out
- [00:20:23.482]and take pictures of the rows of the green trees
- [00:20:25.588]so that we could get one of those great
- [00:20:26.830]before and after photos.
- [00:20:30.834]I know John is gonna talk about this later.
- [00:20:32.939]But the trees dry out so incredibly quickly.
- [00:20:36.116]I mean the tree on the right,
- [00:20:37.112]you could see there are already cracks
- [00:20:38.633]developing in the trunk.
- [00:20:40.451]These trees,
- [00:20:41.850]I mean, I say they've been dead for less than year.
- [00:20:44.331]They still have some green sprouts on them.
- [00:20:48.553]We are releasing biocontrols.
- [00:20:50.554]There are four different species of parasitic wasps
- [00:20:52.776]that we've been releasing in Boulder
- [00:20:56.151]in cooperation with APHIS.
- [00:21:00.075]Then enforcement.
- [00:21:00.908]Someone had mentioned this earlier.
- [00:21:02.401]Had asked John a question.
- [00:21:05.551]Our city attorney's office has told us
- [00:21:08.050]we have a duty to actually enforce
- [00:21:11.564]on private property owners who have dead ash trees
- [00:21:14.014]overhanging public property.
- [00:21:16.287]I have no idea how we're gonna keep up with that though.
- [00:21:19.132]I mean, the few that we've had so far,
- [00:21:20.953]fortunately most people have been taking out
- [00:21:23.645]their dead dying ash trees.
- [00:21:26.216]The few that we've had to enforce on,
- [00:21:27.936]they've taken care of the trees pretty quickly
- [00:21:30.046]when they've been notified.
- [00:21:33.036]Moving forward, I really don't know
- [00:21:35.417]how we're going to keep up with that.
- [00:21:38.966]Wood utilization.
- [00:21:40.358]We know that there's not one solution
- [00:21:43.611]to the wood issue.
- [00:21:45.377]So we are trying really anything that we can
- [00:21:49.776]to get rid of it.
- [00:21:51.765]Everything from mulch, we're composting some of it.
- [00:21:55.055]Boulder County actually heats several of their buildings
- [00:21:58.362]using the wood chips sort of as biomass.
- [00:22:01.263]So we partnered with them
- [00:22:02.472]and they're using some of our urban wood chips
- [00:22:05.257]to actually heat buildings.
- [00:22:07.896]We're experimenting with actually using ash
- [00:22:10.164]in the wood pellet industry
- [00:22:13.590]and trying to mill some of the larger logs
- [00:22:15.175]but we don't really have that
- [00:22:17.474]big of an industry in Colorado for urban wood.
- [00:22:21.843]We've also been doing a whole lot of research projects.
- [00:22:24.905]One thing we do though is
- [00:22:26.504]because we're removing so many infested ash,
- [00:22:28.536]we've been basically just shoving
- [00:22:30.338]a lot of infested material into rearing cages
- [00:22:33.180]which then gives us a lot of adults
- [00:22:36.076]that we can then freeze and use for education outreach
- [00:22:39.713]activities
- [00:22:41.242]throughout the state as well.
- [00:22:45.445]As I mentioned earlier,
- [00:22:46.278]one of the things that I think was most effective
- [00:22:48.549]for outreach were the HOA meetings.
- [00:22:50.969]We also hosted a series of public meetings
- [00:22:53.843]that were very well attended
- [00:22:55.133]where we just brought in a bunch of infested material
- [00:22:57.897]and had a lot of handout
- [00:22:58.988]similar to what you have back here on
- [00:23:01.341]good trees to plant to replace your ash,
- [00:23:04.176]how to identify an ash.
- [00:23:06.969]We do have a website for the city of Boulder.
- [00:23:09.671]We also have a state, a consolidated state website for EAB.
- [00:23:14.348]Both I think have been super helpful
- [00:23:16.140]but they're so hard to keep up with.
- [00:23:18.568]Because it's just amazing how quickly
- [00:23:20.252]the information changes.
- [00:23:22.802]Same thing with social media.
- [00:23:26.942]I was trying to resist Twitter.
- [00:23:29.287]The whole idea of tweeting out
- [00:23:31.799]but I was told we have to.
- [00:23:35.668]Trying to keep up on Facebook and Twitter,
- [00:23:38.144]I mean, it's just been a little bit overwhelming.
- [00:23:43.740]We've also done some wider outreach.
- [00:23:46.682]We hosted a series of what we called dissections
- [00:23:49.234]or workshops for industry people to come in
- [00:23:51.418]to learn more about emerald ash borer
- [00:23:53.502]just since we were the first in the state.
- [00:23:57.903]I think in three years, we trained,
- [00:24:00.106]it was about 350 people.
- [00:24:02.935]Last year, we started doing EAB van tours.
- [00:24:08.256]We were surprised.
- [00:24:09.122]We thought a lot of industry people would sign up for those
- [00:24:11.820]but actually the people who we're signing up,
- [00:24:13.409]we had several members from our state legislature attend.
- [00:24:17.279]We had a lot of city council members
- [00:24:18.887]from other cities attend, which is very good.
- [00:24:21.445]The actual decision-makers.
- [00:24:23.606]Then we've also been trying to engage youth more
- [00:24:26.887]in this process,
- [00:24:28.906]which is a couple of different approaches there.
- [00:24:32.558]One thing that's been really good for us,
- [00:24:34.980]since we've been dealing with this for almost four years now
- [00:24:37.865]is a lot of other cities have started big outreach campaigns
- [00:24:41.179]that we've been able to piggyback off of.
- [00:24:43.873]The city of Denver has their Be A Smart Ash campaign.
- [00:24:48.393]They have coasters and they have little sticky notes
- [00:24:51.407]and t-shirts and they wrap trees
- [00:24:53.424]and they talk to the media.
- [00:24:55.005]That's been really good for us too to help get the word out.
- [00:24:58.377]So we're not just doing it on our own.
- [00:25:00.402]Boulder County has done like bus ads.
- [00:25:03.056]Then over on the right,
- [00:25:04.068]they did this really cool campaign
- [00:25:05.771]with little beer mats
- [00:25:07.840]because the micro brew industry is huge
- [00:25:11.141]along the front range, and so,
- [00:25:13.488]they actually made up these little beer mats
- [00:25:15.341]and then passed them out
- [00:25:16.647]to all of the different brew pubs
- [00:25:18.956]for folks to use underneath their beer.
- [00:25:21.271]Hugely successful campaign there.
- [00:25:26.548]Our strategic plan,
- [00:25:28.476]we had said again, rather than just doing a
- [00:25:32.265]EAB management plan for council to adopt,
- [00:25:35.326]we wanted to do sort of a bigger picture
- [00:25:37.045]because so many of the issues we identified
- [00:25:39.018]like wood utilization and pesticide use
- [00:25:41.317]were bigger than just emerald ash borer.
- [00:25:46.220]But one of the things that we want to include in there
- [00:25:49.130]is an EAB recovery plan.
- [00:25:51.586]I know that sounds
- [00:25:53.346]a bit sort of funny maybe but
- [00:25:56.720]we're sort of in the thick of it now and
- [00:26:00.612]we're seeing that everything that we're doing
- [00:26:02.839]has been impacted.
- [00:26:04.260]We're behind on pruning rotation where
- [00:26:07.231]our service request have gone way out
- [00:26:09.165]that we just can't keep up.
- [00:26:11.882]We want to have some sort of a recovery plan
- [00:26:14.324]so we know once we get through all of these removals,
- [00:26:17.176]what's it gonna look like on the other side
- [00:26:18.923]and how are we going to recover from that?
- [00:26:23.706]How much is it costing?
- [00:26:26.919]Again, the city of Boulder has decided to fund it
- [00:26:29.538]through capital money,
- [00:26:31.615]project money rather than just operating funds.
- [00:26:35.247]They're giving us almost three million
- [00:26:37.058]over an eight-year period of time
- [00:26:39.413]and it started out as an additional like
- [00:26:41.135]$220,000 a year for the first four years
- [00:26:44.261]and then it's gonna go up to about half a million
- [00:26:47.044]for the last four years of that
- [00:26:48.779]sort of to coincide hopefully with the peak of EAB.
- [00:26:52.925]You could see sort of what we're using that money for.
- [00:26:56.266]We were able to add one additional staff person
- [00:27:00.001]right after we found emerald ash borer.
- [00:27:02.141]It wasn't really a new FTE.
- [00:27:03.799]We were able to sort of repurpose
- [00:27:05.322]a vacant horticulture position
- [00:27:07.208]similar to John hiring an arborist instead of
- [00:27:11.566]a gardener there.
- [00:27:13.279]We are adding two more this year.
- [00:27:15.755]Then we're gonna be requesting one more for next year
- [00:27:18.576]as well.
- [00:27:20.092]We know we're gonna be losing all of those great services
- [00:27:22.462]that canopy provides.
- [00:27:25.904]And deferred maintenance,
- [00:27:27.585]it's one of those things you deal with as a forester
- [00:27:29.846]but it's hard to quantify really what that loss
- [00:27:33.467]is really going to be.
- [00:27:37.687]I think it's important to look for partnerships though
- [00:27:40.399]because these have been very successful for us.
- [00:27:43.695]Not just with outreach but also saving money as well.
- [00:27:48.993]We were able to get a $200,000 grant
- [00:27:51.635]through the Knight Foundation.
- [00:27:54.048]They're sort of an innovative program for wood utilization.
- [00:27:57.432]We have a problem with the huge homeless population
- [00:27:59.726]in Boulder,
- [00:28:00.972]so the city of Boulder, the Parks and Recreation Department
- [00:28:03.797]is partnering with our library makerspace
- [00:28:06.402]and with the Bridge House which is a nonprofit in Boulder
- [00:28:09.150]which helps transition homeless off of the streets
- [00:28:13.649]and back out into the working world.
- [00:28:17.673]What we're doing is milling and kiln-drying
- [00:28:19.537]some of the ash wood
- [00:28:20.841]and then teaching some of these homeless folks
- [00:28:23.259]how to utilize some of the woodworking tools
- [00:28:25.733]that they're making into crafts,
- [00:28:28.888]and then selling at craft fairs, farmer's markets,
- [00:28:31.645]things like that.
- [00:28:33.355]It's been hugely successful
- [00:28:36.201]as far as getting the word out about emerald ash borer.
- [00:28:40.405]It's not making a lot of money.
- [00:28:42.039]We're not utilizing a whole lot of the ash wood
- [00:28:44.752]but again, it's been very successful
- [00:28:46.185]with at least getting the message out
- [00:28:47.834]about emerald ash borer in sort of an innovative way.
- [00:28:51.347]Boulder's also one of the 100 resilient cities
- [00:28:55.292]so we've been able to leverage and actually get a free
- [00:28:57.632]urban tree canopy analysis out of using,
- [00:29:01.514]working with some of the partners from that as well.
- [00:29:04.530]The National Arbor Day Foundation
- [00:29:06.237]through their Natural Disaster Recovery Program has,
- [00:29:10.443]some of the their corporate sponsors have given us money
- [00:29:12.555]to give out free trees to the public
- [00:29:15.706]so it's been really, really successful
- [00:29:18.346]just trying to reach out and look for partners.
- [00:29:21.708]Even as simple as there's an energy company
- [00:29:25.137]who wanted to look into can they utilize ash wood
- [00:29:28.096]for pellets?
- [00:29:29.656]For barbecue grills and that sort of thing.
- [00:29:32.646]We've been doing an experiment with them
- [00:29:34.357]to see if maybe that would work long term.
- [00:29:38.818]There's just not enough time for everything
- [00:29:41.447]that you're going to do.
- [00:29:42.952]You realize that the scale of your operations changes
- [00:29:47.385]just because of emerald ash borer.
- [00:29:49.394]You're doing more plantings.
- [00:29:50.539]You're doing more removals.
- [00:29:52.493]Which means your entire process has to change.
- [00:29:57.243]We laugh about we have to start looking at things
- [00:29:59.704]through sort of EAB colored glasses but
- [00:30:03.899]your contracting process, your specifications change.
- [00:30:08.235]You have
- [00:30:09.543]development review.
- [00:30:11.200]Suddenly ash trees are not worthy of preservation anymore
- [00:30:14.424]on development projects.
- [00:30:16.104]You go out to appraise the value of an ash tree,
- [00:30:20.366]suddenly it's not worth as much
- [00:30:21.769]because you have emerald ash borer now.
- [00:30:24.470]Rotational pruning.
- [00:30:26.590]We sat there scratching our heads like,
- [00:30:28.504]wait a minute, we're going out doing rotational pruning,
- [00:30:31.244]do we really wanna prune these ash trees
- [00:30:32.966]that we know we're not treating?
- [00:30:34.887]How are we gonna message that to the public?
- [00:30:37.544]There's a lot in arborist licensing.
- [00:30:39.843]Someone mentioned earlier,
- [00:30:41.919]we have all of these new arborist coming to town.
- [00:30:45.976]We wanna work here, there's work here.
- [00:30:48.735]Now,
- [00:30:49.996]that has to ramp up.
- [00:30:51.078]How are we gonna get all these new folks licensed?
- [00:30:54.915]Trying to keep up with the marketing
- [00:30:56.800]and the outreach and the
- [00:30:59.228]again the media requests.
- [00:31:02.924]It's not just EAB directly that is so time consuming
- [00:31:07.250]but all of the other things associated with it
- [00:31:09.684]that takes so much time.
- [00:31:13.253]You've gotta have a sense of humor about it though
- [00:31:15.993]because EAB
- [00:31:17.397]is so
- [00:31:19.165]frustrating and overwhelming and negative
- [00:31:22.812]that you have to try and
- [00:31:25.654]stay positive somehow.
- [00:31:28.196]What's been great is having this EAB response team
- [00:31:32.177]to sort rely upon.
- [00:31:34.137]We had a couple of extension agents.
- [00:31:36.415]While they were in for months
- [00:31:37.901]doing all of the branch peeling
- [00:31:39.263]for the delimitation survey,
- [00:31:40.939]changed the words, that was The Night Before Christmas,
- [00:31:43.720]and so they sort of sat around here.
- [00:31:45.179]These are a couple of my favorite stanzas,
- [00:31:47.974]EAB poetry.
- [00:31:49.677]We erect a yule ash every holiday season,
- [00:31:53.225]decorate it with woodpeckers and little EAB felt ornaments.
- [00:31:58.365]Then
- [00:31:59.986]try and picture five adults
- [00:32:02.267]from our EAB response team sitting around a desk
- [00:32:05.283]playing with little legos and adult EAB beetles,
- [00:32:08.652]trying to reenact scenes from like Game of Thrones.
- [00:32:14.721]You think, okay, why are you doing this?
- [00:32:17.613]But we were cracking up laughing
- [00:32:19.507]and had tears rolling down our face by the end of it.
- [00:32:22.628]At least it gives you some escape from the monotony
- [00:32:25.844]and sort of the overwhelming dread
- [00:32:28.298]from emerald ash borer at least for a little while.
- [00:32:34.409]Remember
- [00:32:35.352]that
- [00:32:36.218]EAB
- [00:32:37.413]is an awful opportunity.
- [00:32:40.044]This is something that my supervisor said to me
- [00:32:42.643]when I told him that we had found emerald ash borer.
- [00:32:46.320]There's nothing that did more
- [00:32:48.391]for urban forestry divisions across Colorado
- [00:32:51.827]as far as the growth and adding more
- [00:32:54.363]staffing and resources than the disease did
- [00:32:57.959]back in the 1980s.
- [00:32:59.765]Emerald ash borer can have that same impact.
- [00:33:03.466]Again, it's just important to plan ahead
- [00:33:06.197]so that you're positioned well
- [00:33:07.883]to be able to take advantage of that.
- [00:33:11.101]The increased media opportunity.
- [00:33:13.204]Suddenly, you're out there talking to the media
- [00:33:15.814]about your urban forestry program too,
- [00:33:18.330]so it's a great opportunity to promote your program.
- [00:33:21.140]You suddenly are talking to
- [00:33:23.217]all of upper management in the city.
- [00:33:25.876]I've written more memos to advisory boards and council
- [00:33:29.808]in the past 3 1/2 years than I did in the previous
- [00:33:32.693]15 years
- [00:33:33.857]before that.
- [00:33:35.710]Again, the inter-agency cooperation,
- [00:33:38.702]it might start with emerald ash borer,
- [00:33:40.716]but then can spread to other opportunities as well.
- [00:33:45.169]Again, updated tree inventories, better diversity,
- [00:33:48.628]and again, trying to take advantage of those partnerships.
- [00:33:52.895]If anyone has any questions,
- [00:33:54.595]I'm happy to answer questions.
- [00:33:57.514]Ah huh?
- [00:33:58.604](audience member speaks off microphone)
- [00:34:20.140]So far it's just Boulder County where it's been detected.
- [00:34:24.017]In Boulder County, we don't have,
- [00:34:27.291]ash isn't native there
- [00:34:28.705]and so we don't have sort of those
- [00:34:30.273]contiguous ash populations that you see in the Midwest.
- [00:34:35.055]It's really just like these isolated urban pockets of ash.
- [00:34:39.176]The one exception to that are some of the trees
- [00:34:41.766]like I mentioned, green ash being naturalized
- [00:34:44.206]along a lot of the creeks.
- [00:34:46.920]Boulder County has a plan on how to deal with it on
- [00:34:51.482]their county right of ways
- [00:34:54.029]and in some of their county parks.
- [00:34:57.528]Similar to what some of the cities are doing.
- [00:34:59.665]They're treating it just like
- [00:35:00.817]an urban EAB management plan.
- [00:35:04.035]But a lot of the states,
- [00:35:05.600]a lot of those properties don't have many ash on them.
- [00:35:10.385]They really haven't been that involved yet.
- [00:35:16.458]Any other questions.
- [00:35:18.475]Ah huh?
- [00:35:19.379](audience member speaks off microphone)
- [00:35:31.715]No.
- [00:35:32.548]We actually,
- [00:35:33.720]we are paying for the treatments for those trees.
- [00:35:37.700]Per ordinance we are, as a city, responsible
- [00:35:40.501]for all of the trees on the right of way.
- [00:35:42.346]So pretty much any of the maintenance on those;
- [00:35:45.016]pruning, removals, stump grinding, pesticide treatments.
- [00:35:49.553]But
- [00:35:50.696]what we had done was for those 6,000 ash,
- [00:35:53.226]we went out and evaluated those trees
- [00:35:56.031]and chose the best 25%
- [00:35:59.749]to preserve longer term
- [00:36:02.222]and then said we were gonna phase out
- [00:36:03.948]those other 4,500 trees.
- [00:36:07.536]For those other 4,500 trees, if an adjacent home owner
- [00:36:11.208]wants to do treatment on those trees,
- [00:36:13.491]we're allowing them to do so at their expense.
- [00:36:16.561]But for those 1,500, we actually are bearing that expense.
- [00:36:21.921]But we just gave them the option
- [00:36:23.533]because so many of in Boulder are so concerned about
- [00:36:26.317]the use of pesticides,
- [00:36:28.135]that we really wanted to give them the option
- [00:36:30.861]of
- [00:36:31.694]phasing out their tree rather than having us use pesticides
- [00:36:34.917]for it.
- [00:36:37.011](audience member speaks off microphone)
- [00:36:41.365]Right, yeah.
- [00:36:43.089]You know, many cities in Colorado,
- [00:36:44.923]I mean, vary just wildly.
- [00:36:48.003]The city of Denver, for example,
- [00:36:49.966]maintains all of those city parks
- [00:36:51.946]and what they call their parkway trees
- [00:36:53.988]like those in the medians and along arterial streets.
- [00:36:58.119]But any of the trees adjacent to residential properties,
- [00:37:01.925]even though it's in right of way,
- [00:37:03.219]all maintenance is the responsibility
- [00:37:05.229]of the adjacent home owner.
- [00:37:07.405]But Denver ask for and received
- [00:37:10.454]I think it was like almost $3 million
- [00:37:12.861]to start doing emerald ash borer treatments
- [00:37:16.619]to those right of way trees
- [00:37:20.422]in an attempt to really slow the progression
- [00:37:23.078]of emerald ash borer down,
- [00:37:24.632]to really be proactive and try and preserve
- [00:37:26.581]some of that tree canopy as well.
- [00:37:30.661]Ah huh?
- [00:37:31.494](audience member speaks off microphone)
- [00:37:55.299]For those 1,500 trees that we're treating,
- [00:37:58.180]we actually are contracting the treatment of those.
- [00:38:01.673]Yes, through one of our licensed arborist.
- [00:38:03.643]They have to be licensed as a qualified supervisor
- [00:38:06.293]through the state, all of that.
- [00:38:09.209]For the home owner applications,
- [00:38:11.966]by ordinance they're supposed to tell us
- [00:38:16.558]what they're applying to their trees and
- [00:38:18.994]ask our permission before doing so.
- [00:38:22.903]I know a lot of them are probably not.
- [00:38:26.799]So were trying to put some of that burden back on
- [00:38:29.848]the applicators.
- [00:38:31.605]The city of Denver for example just
- [00:38:33.171]started a permitting system
- [00:38:35.017]that all the applicators actually have to
- [00:38:37.472]apply for a free permit
- [00:38:39.161]before applying anything to a right of way tree.
- [00:38:42.188]We wanna try to do something similar
- [00:38:44.010]within the city of Boulder
- [00:38:45.762]just so that we can get a better handle on what
- [00:38:49.123]some of those applicators are applying to our public trees.
- [00:38:54.071]Because right now, we tell them,
- [00:38:56.698]don't use the neonics, use the emamectin benzoate
- [00:38:59.454]but what they're actually applying, we're not sure.
- [00:39:06.758]Thank you.
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- Tags:
- Forest
- Ash
- Emerald Ash Borer
- Trees
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