That's sad. In my opinion, invasive species are the biggest threat to our natural resources right now. We are dealing with them everywhere. Even though I make my living studying them, I still find it sad. Hemlock woolly adelgid, emerald ash borer, ALB, SOD, laurel wilt, gold spotted oak borer, 1000 cankers disease of black walnut, beech bark disease, Dutch elm disease, WPBR, Sirex wood wasp - it is a broken record. The saddest part is that much of this is preventable.

Cutting down the trees and turning them into mulch won't eradicate the beetles, unless they are piling the mulch and super-heating it to create compost. If the mulch is used in other locations, this could spread the infestation. I liked the idea of our local free mulch until I considered the possibilities that I was bringing in diseases/pests to my yard. I can understand your distress. I'm hoping the beetles don't make it to your place. Will birds feed on them? Is there any local predators? Sure don't want to bring in any foreign predators! Sandy

Well, I've got american chestnuts down both sides of the driveway.....lovely lawn trees for a big lawn. Some of my seedlings come from small nut selections, 2.8 grams or so, and the blue jays are in heaven. The larger nutted ones, 6 grams or so, are great for cooking, and munching. I have some half Chinese, half American ones, letting nature introgress blight resistance into our woods. The pure Chinese get overtopped too soon, but the halflings produce seed for quite a while. I've had catkins for 3 years now, but no burs , however some of my buddies have trees older than mine and they are producing lots of seednuts. They have been kind enough to share seed, grin. I don't see why both approaches wouldn't work. If you want the F1 generation to be male fertile though, you need to use a Chinese seed parent, not an American seed parent. If you intend instead to use male barren F1 generation to produce a backcross to pure americans in your woods already, use the American as the seed parent. The backcross 1 has some male fertile ones and they can pollinate each other and nature culls whatever ones didn't get at least some blight resistance and good tree form. Some of my F1's want to be bushes and I rogued them. Some of my BC1's want to be bushes too, so just plant lots and let nature cull.

Some trees may exhibit natural resistance, oikos in michigan was selling seed of an Asian species listed as this: "Fraxinus rhynchophylla Immune to Emerald Ash Borer This is the only ash species left at our farm after the emerald ash borer came and went. I really couldnâÂÂt understand why until I tried to prune a few branches off this species and found even with really good loppers the density and toughness of the wood is quite challenging to clip. ( A lot like pruning apricots. ) I was fortunate to get this seed many years ago from Korea where this mountainous species is found throughout China into zone 5. Ours selections are kind of slow growing compared to green ash but easy to establish in dry or poor soils low in organic matter. Late to leaf missing frosts and completely immune to the borer as far as I am aware. "