City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/26931
Subject to Council approval of the 2011 EAB Program, staff will be using the HSI results to focus our commu- nity EAB marketing program. We will go door to door to engage residents and explain their two options at pres- ent: treat or remove. Meanwhile, we are moving forward with several comple- mentary projects. The first is a phase-3 woodlot inven- tory; at the time of writing this project is 26% complete. It will give us a good estimate of how many ash trees are in our 2,000 acres (809 ha) of municipal woodland parks. It will also help target the compilation of work orders for removal of those hazard ash trees located along trails and property lines. Finally, it will improve the accuracy of our capital budget for EAB. The second project involves the Green Leaf Volatile Trapping method. Preliminary Canadian Forest Service results indicate a good correlation between adult cap- ture in the traps and larvae gallery count. Thus, this method may be a good tool for us for mapping pres- ence or absence of EAB. The third project is a TreeAzin Threshold Project. We have been able to save ash trees that were infested with modest levels of EAB through treatment with TreeAzin in 2008. BioForest Technologies, manufacturer of TreeAzin, is conducting field trials to document and eventually publish treat- ment thresholds. The largest component of the 2010 EAB Work Plan approved by Council was our ash tree treatment pro- gram, consisting of approximately 1,600 street and park trees treated with the 5ml dose of TreeAzin by our contractor, Davey Tree Expert Company. Emphasis was placed on treating large stature trees and trees located in the area of “moderate” level infestation. Approximately 25% of our treatable ash canopy was injected. This reflected our 2010 treatment objec- tives: priority canopy protection and insect suppres- sion. Door hangers advised residents that this was the beginning of a 15-year treatment effort. A com- munications plan is being finalized, with public open houses planned for next year since 80% of Oakville’s treatable ash tree cover is located on private property. Forestry staff will be recommending a large increase in this program for 2011. Most of these projects are described by the people who helped deliver them in a December 1, 2010 Webinar that SMA initiated with UNRI: www.unri.org/webcasts/ archive/december-2010. These efforts all tie into an EAB Strategic Management Plan expected to be approved by Council this winter. The plan is expected to contain performance measures based on canopy cover since Oakville’s new official plan contains an objective to increase our urban forest can- opy to 40%. Canopy cover will be our performance mea- sure to track our success in managing EAB. For more 34 information on all of the EAB related projects underway in Oakville, please see www.oakville.ca/eab.htm. In Canada, the highest level of government that sup- ports urban forestry is the municipal. This has nega- tive consequences when dealing with such issues as EAB. Oakville is part of an alliance which is lobbying for senior government support. —John McNeil, R.P.F., Manager of Forestry, Corporation of the Town of Oakville W hen I arrived in Adrian in July of 2010, many of the 678 ash trees on the City right-of-way had already been removed. Approximately 200 remain, mainly due to efforts to prolong the inevitable. However, by the time this is published there will be few if any remaining ash on the right-of-way. In my previous position as city arborist for Wichita, Kansas, I was preparing for the arrival of EAB; now I am dealing with the aftermath. What have I learned? By now we should all know the importance of biodiver- sity, but it is important to note that biodiversity isn’t just a canopy-wide idea. We need to ensure that we have diversity at the neighborhood and street level. The majority of the ash trees in Adrian were planted in clusters; in one area alone there were 105 white ash in a square city block. We also had six streets that were stocked 80% or more with ash, spanning several blocks. Greater diversity at the neighborhood level would have greatly reduced the visible impact of EAB in Adrian. Dead EAB-infested ash chipping makes a lot of dust. City Trees