THE CONSEQUENCES COULD BE DISASTROUS.
IN AN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE, THE CFIA HAS MADE A MOVE TO EXPAND THE REGULATED AREA FOR EAB TO COVER MOST OF ONTARIO as per Map 1.
“The presence of EAB has now been confirmed in 27 Ontario counties, and in seven areas in the province of Quebec. The CFIA does not have resources available to maintain individual regulations on numerous, discrete regulated areas.”
THIS EFFECTIVELY MEANS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS WASHING ITS HANDS OF Emerald Ash Borer AND ITS LETHAL CONSEQUENCES ON THE NATIVE ASH TREES COVERING THIS PROVINCE.
By expanding the regulated area the Federal Governments policy “To help prevent the spread of EAB, a Ministerial Order, ‘The Emerald Ash Borer Infested Places Order’, is updated annually at the end of each survey season to take into account all new detections. This order restricts the movement of firewood of all species, as well as trees, nursery stock, logs, lumber, wood packaging or dunnage, wood or bark, wood chips or bark chips of the genus Fraxinus from regulated areas, in order to limit the spread of EAB.” is rendered useless when the majority of the province becomes regulated there is then nothing to prevent firewood, logs, bark wood chips etc within this now huge area.
Click here to download CFIA EAB report 2013_EN[1]
1 New research shows that all Canadian ash tree species are vulnerable to attack, and that all but the blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata) is susceptible to being rapidly killed by the emerald ash borer (see for example: Tanis and McCullough 2012).