TO THE EDITOR:
The emerald ash borer, a beetle from Asia, has spread to Orange County, but there seems to be little public awareness, and UNC’s administration is silent. Being non-native, emerald ash borers have few limits here and become so numerous that their wood-boring grubs kill virtually every ash tree.
Ashes are ecologically and economically important, and there are many large ashes on campus, such as those near Hanes Art Center and Morehead Planetarium. The borers also attack fringe trees, which was only discovered last year. Individual trees can be protected with regular insecticide applications, but once a tree is dying, it is difficult to save.
Even dead trees are beneficial to wildlife, but hazardous snags will have to be cut.
There will be a cost however UNC responds, but has UNC even inventoried its at-risk trees?
There was an article in The Daily Tar Heel when the beetle was found in counties bordering Virginia in 2013, but it has spread a lot since then, most likely because people broke county quarantines and transported infested firewood, etc., so a statewide quarantine was declared in early September. The beetle is thought to have first entered the U.S. in the early ’90s through packing, a catastrophe made more likely by globalization, and sadly likely to be repeated in the future.
Michael Pollock
Class of ’04
