The emerald ash borer has been a historically hard insect to deal with in South Dakota.
New treatment technology offers some protection, but some professionals are concerned people won’t keep up with the generations of treatments.
The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle species from Asia. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the insect is responsible for the death of tens of millions of trees in North America.
John Ball is a professor for the South Dakota State University Extension. He said it’s a problem that is not going away anytime soon.
“The insect doesn’t move very quickly, and we also have very good quarantines, folks are obeying them. But nevertheless, there’s always some accidental movement of wood that contains the emerald ash borer, so it is slowly but surely continuing to move out from the first center, which was Sioux Fallsm and then Canton, Crooks, and Brandon, and then most recently Lennox," said Ball.
Ball said South Dakota planted a lot of ash trees in the 1970s. He said unfortunately it is only a matter of time before all ash trees in the state are infected.
Ball said the insect will cause large economic impact over time and that treatment and prevention can help delay the spread. He said an issue with treatment, however, is injection fatigue.
“People were just very enthusiastic in treating their tress in 2018 when we first found the insect. Now, six years later, 2024, they're kind of deciding, 'I’m not going to treat it anymore, when the tree dies, we will just cut it down,'" said Ball. "That's why treatments are probably appropriate for homeowners or tree owners, but are a little more difficult for a city to undertake.”
Nathan Plaats is the City Administrator for the City of Lennox. They were recently notified of an emerald ash borer outbreak in their city. Plaats said the city has an action plan ready to help mitigate damage.
“We’ve already had an assessment done by a certified arborist, who assessed all the ash trees in the park. So, we’ve marked some for removal and others are going to be good candidates for treatment. So, we’ll probably be starting the removal process here in the next week or two and getting rid of those trees that are heavily invested or in poor condition. The others, we will probably treat sometime later this year,” said Plaats.
Plaats said the city gained inspiration from other cities already dealing with the insect.
