10/17/2013 7:10 PM
We elected to not treat any of ours based mainly on three factors: 1. cost of treatment exceeds removal and replacement within 5 years according to our arborist and Ohio State extension 2. sheer number of ash we have (removed around 700 over the last 3 years with a little over 500 taken out last winter and at least 100 to go) and associated cost/labor to treat 3. even with that many ash very few of them were "important" in terms of location, strategy, framing of holes, etc. There were a few (10-20) that in hindsight may not've been a bad idea to treat but overall it was the right call for us to remove them rather than treat.
The thing I've been wondering about is what effect the hundreds of thousands of ash that have been removed over the last couple of years throughout the Great Lakes, Midwest, and Northeast is going to have on the remaining trees that are being treated. I assume that at some point the reduction in the number of ash trees will naturally reduce the EAB population but until that point I would think the number of bugs looking for a viable host has increased exponentially - in other words if hypothetically there were 100 EAB's per tree a few years ago now that so many have been removed, there could be 1000/tree. Even if you're getting 90% control, I would think that at some point the threshold of what the tree can tolerate will be exceeded. Anyone have any thoughts/info on this?