Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/forests/page/8/)
(MI) Ann Arbor News – Several residents on Ann Arbor’s west side are angry a massive silver maple tree they believe was healthy was cut down by city foresters. More distressing, they say, is that the 4-foot diameter tree on Charlton Street in the Virginia Park neighborhood was a casualty in a larger pattern. The group believes trees are being removed by default, rather than after efforts to save them. More
(MN) Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Chain saws and experts are converging in the Twin Cities in the fight against the emerald ash borer. In St. Paul, foresters identified eight more infested trees Tuesday as workers continued to remove dozens of others fatally damaged by the bug that, first found in St. Paul May 13, threatens the state’s 900 million ash trees. So far, 67 trees have been either taken down this week or targeted for removal in an effort officials hope will thwart the insect that has killed tens of millions of trees across the Midwest and southern Canada in the past seven years.
(OH) The Toledo Blade – Now’s the time to apply insecticide to ash trees you might be trying to save from a new crop of emerald ash borers.
The sooner, the better. If you fail to spray ash trees by the end of June, you should wait until fall or the spring of 2010, said Amy Stone, Ohio State University extension agent in Toledo. More
(MI) Booth Newspapers – Some 550,000 seedlings have been planted in three areas of the Upper Peninsula, courtesy of Plum Creek Timber Co. The Seattle-based company, which owns and manages about 7 million acres of timberlands nationwide, planted nearly 263,000 seedlings in the Escanaba area, about 174,000 seedlings in the L’Anse area and nearly 120,000 jack pine seedlings northwest of Marquette. More
(ON) The Toronto Star- One arm of the Leslie Street Spit, home to Tommy Thompson Park and the Great Lakes’ largest colony of cormorants, looks like a wintry apocalypse. There are no trees now, just a few guano-spattered snags. This is where cormorants first settled in the park in 1990. They now number about 30,000. In some Ontario parks, Parks Canada officials shoot cormorants to stem the loss of trees.
By Jack Johnston
LANSING — In the dead cold of the Upper Peninsula winter, Robert Heyd leaves his snowmobile and approaches an enormous American beech armed with a slingshot, rope and a saw. Supported by his snowshoes on four feet of snow, Heyd slings a quarter-pound weight attached to parachute cord 80 feet up into the highest branches of the behemoth and uses the rope to haul the 4-foot saw to the top. A branch falls harmlessly to the ground next to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) forest health management program director. It’s a first step in saving the state’s majestic beeches. After eight years of research, the DNR and the U.S. Forest Service are ready to implement a strategy to fight the destructive beech bark disease, said Jennifer Koch, a research biologist with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Delaware, Ohio.