Michigan's ash trees are falling victim to a bug that is killing them and the state is desperately trying to slow the bugs down and save as many trees as possible. Their efforts have been in vain thus far.
In fact, the emerald ash borer is winning the fight; efforts to stop them have utterly failed.
The Michigan quarantine zones have failed. Firewood checkpoints failed. Public service announcements announcing the ban on transportation of firewood from one part of the state to another failed. A five-mile-long bridge failed to stop them. Cutting down swaths of trees to prevent their spread...failed.
The bugs advanced northward, crossed the Mackinaw Bridge and invaded the Upper Peninsula forests.
Now researchers are saying that all that they have been able to do is slow the bugs down. They are not even talking about eradicating the borer anymore.
Millions of trees in the Upper Midwest are at risk. It's high time for a new plan. Enough of this talk of the borer being unstoppable. They're unstoppable because researchers haven't done what they were supposed to do.
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