After successfully escaping an invasion of the emerald ash borer in 2008, the dreaded parasitic insect has been identified in two Kentucky counties. State forestry officials are expecting the invasion to quickly spread throughout the state.
University of Kentucky extension entomologist Lee Townsend said the metallic green Asiatic beetle was found in a residential area of Jessamine County and in a woodlot in Shelby County. Although extremely small in size, the tiny insects have the potential of doing as much damage to Kentucky hardwood ash trees as another small parasite — the Southern pine beetle — did to pine trees in the state just a few years ago.
There is no shortage of ash trees for the green beetles to feast on in Kentucky. The Kentucky Division of Forestry estimates that there are 131 million while ash trees and 92 million green ash trees in the state.
Although not native to North America, the ash borers were first discovered near Detroit just seven years ago. Since then, the insects have killed tens of millions of ash trees in 11 states in the United States and two Canadian provinces. The tiny insects have no natural enemies in the western hemisphere.
A year ago, Kentucky forestry officials placed more than 3,600 traps in an effort to prevent the ash borers from crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky. Even though that effort was apparently successful, forestry officials feared that it was only a matter of time before the ash borers were in Kentucky. They were right.
And the ash borers are not the only insects threatening trees in Kentucky. Woolly adelgids — tiny aphid-like insects no bigger than an ink dot — have destroyed thousands of hemlock trees from Maine to Georgia and were first spotted in Kentucky three years ago. Since the adelgids have no natural enemies in Kentucky, state forestry officials have imported predatory beetles from the Pacific northwest to devour the tiny parasites.
Joyce Bender, head of the Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission, said hemlocks could be annihilated if the woolly adelgids are not stopped. Hemlocks are among the most popular ornamental trees in the Appalachian Mountains, and experts say losing the hemlock stands would drastically change the forest composition in the Southeast.
The greatest threat to our forests is not greedy men and women armed with chain saws, but tiny insects that look absolutely harmless but are anything but that.
Editorials
A bug attack — 05/30/09
Tiny parasites are threatening ash and hemlock trees in state
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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