Ash wood products quarantine lifted
In the ongoing environmental battle against the spread of the destructive Emerald Ash Borer, the state has decided quarantines no longer help.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation announced recently it was lifting the quarantine on the movement of ash wood products in New York. In a notice posted to its website, DEC said the “regulations are no longer serving the purpose of slowing the spread of Emerald Ash Borer or allowing time for municipal governments to plan for the arrival of Emerald Ash Borer.”
“The financial cost of the regulations to state government and the forest products industry now outweigh the limited economic benefit of protecting a dwindling ash resource from infestation,” the notice said. “Immediate repeal of these regulations will allow the forest products industry and forest landowners to harvest and process ash that is still of high quality.”
Regulations remain in place against moving any ash wood infested with the Emerald Ash Borer, which is an invasive species killing ash trees. There is also still a prohibition in place against moving firewood more than 50 miles from its source.
In New York, 43 counties were partly or entirely included in the quarantine of ash wood by 2017. Ulster and Greene counties were both added to the quarantine zone in 2010, while Dutchess was added in 2013.
Ash trees currently represent approximately 7 percent of the state’s forest resource, or approximately 700 million ash trees.
“Harvesting this resource before the infestation becomes even more widespread is in the best interest of forest landowners and the forest products industry as infested ash degrades quickly, resulting in decreased economic value and greater risk of personal injury and property damage as infested trees quickly weaken,” the DEC notice said.
John Bartow Jr., executive director of the Empire State Forest Products Association, said the quarantines did what they could to slow the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer but had also made it more difficult each year for mills to obtain ash logs. He said the quarantine prohibited all ash logs, even if they were not infested, from being moved out of the quarantine zones.
Now that the regulations have been lifted, mills can obtain the logs they need and landowners can sell any healthy ash wood they still have, Bartow said.
“The demand for ash ... is through the roof right now,” Bartow added, noting that it is used in flooring, furniture and for baseball bats, among others. He said once an ash tree dies, it no longer has any value beyond firewood.
Emerald Ash Borers lay eggs on the bark of the ash tree and, when the larvae hatches, they bore into the tree and feed on the outer
part of the trunk. The borers interrupt the tree’s ability to move water and nutrients, causing the trees to die. When the borers mature, they exit the tree through distinctive D-shaped holes.
In the city of Poughkeepsie, a tree maintenance and restoration program has been started, Mayor Rob Rolison said. He said, though, the city has to first manage the Emerald Ash Borer, “which has severely impacted many of our city’s 400 ash trees, with 50 trees being identified as needing removal.”