"You've Caught the NET!"

Hope you're enjoying your weekend, folks!

If you're from Chicago, or New York City, you may have heard of the Asian Longhorned Beetle.  This speckled insect, which apparently stowed away in packing materials from imported Chinese products, infested, and eventually destroyed, hundreds of trees in New York City Parks, before making its way to Chicago in 2001.

While here, the bug - actually, it's larvae, which grew after adult insects planted their eggs in many Willow, Box Elder, Poplar, Maple, Horse Chestnut, and Apple Trees throughout Chicago and the suburbs - feasted under the bark of these affected trees, eventually killing them.

Here in Chicago, dozens of trees in the Lincoln Park and Ravenswood Neighborhoods, on the North Side, had to be cut down and incinerated to kill the insects.  Only today are the younger, heartier trees that replaced them growing enough to provide some shade - but nothing like the nearly-100-year-old trees that had to be destroyed because of the Asian bugs.

The Asian Longhorned Beetle was officially declared eliminated here in Chicago in mid-2005.

This past week, a new tree-eating pest was discovered in Chicago, near 29th and State Streets, just south of the Chicago Loop, on the Near South Side.  The trees were found in a forty-year old tree grove, containing Ash and other trees.  This new pest feeds exclusively on Ash trees.

Earlier this month, the City of Chicago Department of Forestry found four of the 3/4" long, emerald green insects nearby.  They collected the bugs, and sent them to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who confirmed their identity.  (See the Chicago Tribune File Photo of the Emerald Ash Borer, on the right).

This past week, Chicago Forestry Workers felled the first tree affected by the newly-discovered pests.

 "Our immediate priority is to control the spread of this infestation and to try to save as many trees as possible.  We want to contain it, to make sure that it doesn't spread."  says Chicago Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Piccardi,

Picardi is making every effort to spare trees from being cut down to kill the Emerald Ash Borer, whose larvae kill ash trees by chewing through their inner bark.  Illinois' Emerald Ash Borer Outreach Coordinator, Juli Heminghous, says about 25 million ash trees have been lost to the insect across the United States, including roughly 5,000 trees in Illinois.  The City of Chicago estimates about 20% of its 500,000 parkway trees are ash, and susceptible to the insect.

The insect has been seen throughout Cook County, in which the City of Chicago is located.  It has also been found by local officials in neighboring Kane, DuPage, and LaSalle Counties.  They are thought to have spread through infested nursery stock or firewood - especially firewood left over from season to season.  Illinois ash trees have been quarantined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a result of  the threat of Ash Borer infestation. 

See our BlogChicagoHomes.com post from June 19th, for more info.  You'll find a link to the Chicago Tribune story from Robert Mitchum and Melissa Anderson.  Residents of Chicago suspecting one of their ash trees is infested should call the Chicago Bureau of Forestry, at 312-742-3385.

DEAN & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO