N.Y. setting traps for invasive beetles

[Staff]

Outdoors: N.Y. setting traps for invasive beetles
June 9, 2009
by Dave Henderson

Outdoors: N.Y. setting traps for invasive beetles | pressconnects.com | Press & Sun-Bulletin
excerpt from above:

The Department of Environmental Conservation will be deploying the purple prism traps in treelines throughout the state in an attempt to trap the beetles. There will also be a concentration in areas adjacent to neighboring states and Canadian provinces that have already detected this potentially devastating invasive species.

The main route that enables this insect, as well as other invasive species, to spread is from moving firewood from one place to another. That is why in 2008, New York adopted regulations that ban untreated firewood from entering the state and restricts intrastate movement of untreated firewood to no more than a 50-mile radius from its source (Firewood and Invasive Insects - NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation).

New York has more than 900 million ash trees. Many communities are at particular risk because ash was widely planted as a street tree after Dutch elm disease killed many urban trees.

[Equilibrium]

I don't understand why these municipalities don't begin companion planting right now. They could get a low cost sapling in the ground within feet of these Ash trees which would allow the sapling to establish itself over the next few years before the Ash comes tumbling down... and the Ash are going to come down.