Adult emerald ash borer found in Iowa City

An adult emerald ash borer has been found in Iowa City, but experts say it's too soon to tell whether an infestation will follow.

'This is odd. Usually you find infested trees before you find the insects, but that is not the case in Iowa City,” said Mark Vitosh, the Department of Natural Resources district forester for Johnson, Linn and four other east-central Iowa counties.

Vitosh said the ash borer was found in an established neighborhood on the east side of town.

An examination of ash trees in the area turned up no trees showing typical infestation symptoms, which include thinned canopies, green shoots at the base of the trunk and drilling by woodpeckers in the trunk and upper branches.

In fact, said Vitosh, all the ash trees in the neighborhood appeared quite healthy.

'All we have so far is a beetle, and it is hard to know how it got here or where it came from,” he said.

Iowa City Parks Superintendent Zachary Hall said the discovery will not change how the city manages the approximately 2,000 ash trees in parks and public rights of way.

Operating in the belief that 'it is not an if but a when scenario,” department staff members have been regularly monitoring ash trees' health and systematically removing ash trees already in decline, Hall said.

The lack of signs of an infestation may 'buy us some time as we move to diversity our urban forest,” he said.

The discovery serves as 'another reminder to homeowners and communities in Iowa that the threat from this destructive beetle is very real,” said State Entomologist Robin Pruisner of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

State forestry officials have predicted that most of the state's ash trees will be killed by the pest within 10 years.

Pruisner said the Iowa EAB Team, which includes members from several state and federal agencies, will continue to work with officials in Johnson County and other communities to help them prepare, diagnose and respond to the threat posed by EAB.

Until last year, only one Iowa infestation had been confirmed - in the state's far northeast corner in 2010. Four were confirmed last year - in Des Moines, Jefferson, Cedar and Union counties - and already this year infestations have been confirmed in Black Hawk, Wapello, Bremer and Jasper counties.

A statewide quarantine restricting the movement of hardwood firewood, ash logs, wood chips and ash tree nursery stock out of Iowa into non-quarantined areas of other states was issued Feb. 4.

Officials caution Iowans not to transport firewood across county or state lines, since the movement of firewood poses the greatest threat to quickly spread emerald ash borer even farther.

Iowa has an estimated 52 million rural ash trees and 3.1 million ash trees in urban areas.