Inevitable. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been reported there much, much sooner.

A couple of months ago, a truck pulling a small fishing boat passed me on Interstate 94 heading west. Inside the boat was a large stack of firewood. The left trailer tire hit a bump or pothole in the road and out popped one of the logs from inside the boat. It bounced and slid into the center median ditch. I wondered what the odds were of that being a borer-filled, dead green ash and how far that boat was headed west.

Lantern flies showing up now in my area for first time. Enough that looking at any ailanthus tree will reveal them.

There are mature dead ash trees all over the city of Eau Claire. They're hard to miss and one realizes just how extensively they were planted decades ago. I'm guessing we're at the stage where Detroit/Ann Arbor was ten years ago. On the other hand, tree service companies are doing well...

With Hemlock Woolly Adelgid now in Michigan, one has to wonder how long before it finds us. There's a feeling of inevitability to it.

maackia, the adelgid has been thru west MD for over 20 yrs now. Many have died, but the fatality rate as I observe is not as bad as initially -- the adelgid numbers are now varying alot year to year. Alot of surviving hemlocks soldier on w/damaged foliage and, unless further serious attacks occur, could keep surviving.

A 25 ft hemlock on brother's lot just north of me seems to have adelgids on it pretty bad, but yet the death of foliage is surprisingly minimal -- you wouldn't think it was infected unless looking closely underneath the branches and it has been that way now for many years.

By coincidence, I heard this radio podcast on npr just a week ago:

Researchers Try to Save Ash Trees from Extinction(transcript)

So there is hope that fully resistant native ash trees will be developed by cross-breeding "lingering" ash trees with enough resistance to have survived the peak of EAB infestation.

I sure hope their efforts pay off in a tree that is "fully resistant." I had not heard the term "lingering" used before. I'll try to remember that one.

The ortet for Ulmus americana 'St. Croix', which has a similar story, was found in Afton, MN. It's resistant to Dutch Elm Disease (DED), but is it fully resistant? The patent was issued in 2009, so it may be a bit early to know how it is performing.