Pembroke and federal forestry experts team up to unleash insect predator on ash borer

PEMBROKE The City of Pembroke, Natural Resources Canada's Forest Service and a small wasp are teaming up to help defend ash trees here.

On Monday, Pembroke's Operations Committee approved a request from NRCan to use a woodlot at the end of D'Youville Drive as a research site to conduct releases of a small wasp that preys upon the emerald ash borer, a highly destructive and invasive beetle that feeds under the bark of ash trees, eventually killing them.

Gene Jones of NRCan's Forest Service in Sault Ste. Marie found signs of emerald ash borer activity in Pembroke at the end of D'Youville Drive on city property that is currently used as a snow dump and an Operations Department disposal facility. Ash trees are also located at Riverside Park around the sports fields and campgrounds, at Rotary Park and Pansy Patch Park although ash borer activity has not yet been confirmed at these other locations.

According to the Government of Canada Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the wasps being used as a natural control agent against the emerald ash borer are very small, being less than four millimetres in length, and do not sting humans.

The presence of the emerald ash borer was first confirmed in North America in 2002 and was confirmed in Ottawa in 2008. Nearby municipalities such as Arnprior have already been affected by the ash borer and the cost of removal of affected ash trees has been boring into their budgets.

NRCan's Emerald Ash Borer biocontrol project has been conducting releases of the small wasps in the field since 2013. To date 291,000 of the wasps have been released at 26 other sites in Ontario, including Renfrew and Ottawa, and in Quebec and New Brunswick. The wasps are capable of living solely on ash borers and they look for trees infested with the small beetles.

In order to participate in the project, Pembroke had to agree not to harvest or develop the property at the end of D'Youville Drive for four or five years in order to allow the wasps to establish.

Jones is expected to start using the site for research and releases in the spring of 2021.

WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF NATURaL RESOURCES The eulophid wasp preys on the emerald ash borer, an Asian insect that has been ravaging Canadian ash trees. The wasps are being released in Pembroke and other locations to deal with ash borer infestations.