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The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is celebrating ten years of its ash tree conservation program. The program gives these trees a chance to survive a parasite infestation that would otherwise wipe them out. Since 2016, the organization estimates that ATC has treated 1,398 ash trees.
Across the United States, tens of millions of ash trees have fallen prey to a parasitic beetle called the emerald ash borer.
Since 2002, when the beetle was first found in Michigan, it’s eaten its way through the white ash population in 38 states, including the majority of the trees in North Carolina. It burrows into the tree’s bark, effectively starving it. The ash borer is even more of a threat now because climate change allows the parasites to survive warmer winters.
Ash trees are a vital component of deciduous Blue Ridge forest ecosystems, according to Matt Drury, the lead scientist of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. They’re not the most imposing trees in the forest, but they’re a constant and, prior to the borer, were a dependable part of the ecosystem. White rabbits, porcupines, and white-tailed deer depend on ash trees’ lower-hanging leaves for food, as do 286 species of invertebrates, including many beetles and butterflies. Forty-four of these species depend on ash trees exclusively.
If the ash tree were to disappear, so would the other species that depend on them, Drury said. “And that's kind of that ecological cascade effect.”
Ash aren’t the only trees in danger. Hidden in the shady green canopy of the region’s forests is a desperate struggle for survival for many native tree species, and the creatures that depend on them. Appalachian trees have seen multiple climate threats over the past century, including the oft-told story of the chestnut blight, which nearly eradicated the American chestnut tree in the first half of the twentieth century. There’s also the ongoing, dire threats facing the Eastern hemlock, the American beech and the American elm. Fighting parasites is often a matter of tree-by-tree treatment, which has been the ATC’s approach.
Drury has been spending the past decade injecting trees with insecticide, a process the ATC hopes will help the tree survive into the future.
He believes this intervention is part of the reason the trees survived and continued to seed through Helen’s enormous tree blowdowns.
“We actually kept these ash trees alive to throw seed into these areas of canopy loss,” Drury said. “And so they'll be ash trees as a part of this next generation of forest.”
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy works in concert with other agencies and organizations, including MountainTrue and the Forest Service, to treat these trees from Georgia to Vermont. Asheville-based Appalachian Arborists help locally with some of the finer points of tree treatment in both rural and urban settings.
Appalachian Arborists president Will Blozan said he hopes conservationists can proceed to a less expensive form of protection for the trees. Each tree costs about $150 to treat under current methods.
“It's incredibly effective, but it's very expensive and just not sustainable on the large scale,” Blozan said. But, he added, it’s good enough for now. “We have the tools to keep a population alive and in weight and holding for a better solution to come that's not chemical-based.”
He hopes that this work proceeds into the future and will continue to grow and change. He hopes to continue to find cheaper and less chemical-dependent ways to save the trees, such as using biological controls like finding and breeding beetle-resistant trees or finding and releasing the beetle’s natural predators.
