ASIAN LONGHORNED BEETLE. Moderator: Courtney Chambers April 22, :00 PM CT

Transcription

1 Page 1 ASIAN LONGHORNED BEETLE April 22, :00 PM CT Good afternoon, everybody. Let me share my desktop and get started. First of all let me start off by explaining what we mean when we say cooperative eradication program. The cooperative program at this stage consists of mainly the United States Department of Agriculture, shown at the bottom left, the Ohio Department of Agriculture shown in the Center and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. And there are other players as well. But these three entities are the main cooperators in the Cooperative Eradication Program. And outline for our presentation is shown. We ll first spend a little bit of time looking at the Asian Longghorned Beetle background and biology. Then we ll look at the program. Specifically, who we are and where our authority comes from. And then we ll transition back to what our program has done in response to the introduction of the Asian Longhorned Beetle. And then we ll transition back to what our program has done in response to the introduction of the Asian Longhorned Beetle in Ohio. So for - if there are any taxonomists in the group, you can see the Asian Longhorned Beetle taxonomy on the left hand side of this screen. And then the life cycle is shown on the right. So let me start first here with an adult beetle. And adult female will go into what we call over position sites or - and lay - or deposit an egg in each one of those over position sites. After a few days, they will hatch. A larva will emerge and begin feeding in the cambial area of the tree, just under the bark. As the larva matures, it will begin

2 Page 2 to tunnel into the heartwood of the tree over the winter. And then in the spring, it will pupate. And in the early summer months, it will again emerge, leaving these - an adult will emerge leaving these characteristic perfectly round emergence holds. I don t know if the Asian Longhorned Beetle got to the United States on this exact ship being displayed. But this is just shown to help you understand that with the rise of international commerce mostly with Asia, the risk due to movement of invasive species has also increased. And you know many of these containers on this ship were probably full of wood (pasture) material. And if that wood (pasture) material happens to be infested with invasive species once the cargo is unloaded in the United States or wherever its destination is, those larva could still potentially be viable and start a new infestation. What s at risk due to the Asian Longhorned Beetle? Some of those risks are listed here on the left like tourism. Lots of people can flock to the Northeast to look at the pretty leaves in the all primarily. Sugar maple industry, Ohio is No. 4 or 5 in the nation on any given year as far as maple syrup production is concerned. A lot of timber and nursery stock comes out of Ohio as well. And the entire Northeast for that matter. And then obviously trees do a lot to purify our water and air and really our quality of life. We run into people often who say You know the main reason I moved into the country was because of how beautiful it is with all these trees. And now you hear, they cut them all down. We unfortunately get that. But it s for a greater purpose which I ll explain later in the presentation.

3 Page 3 A little more pointedly. What s at risk due to the Asian Longhorned Beetle? Shown here is the William H. Harsha Lake and Dam and the East Fork Recreational Area. You can imagine if a high percentage of all those trees in that surrounding area were decimated due to an Asian Longhorn Beetle infestation or an attempt to control an Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation what that could do to the water runoff and the level of the lake and that whole recreational area. So there s a lot at risk. The - some representative Asian Longhorned Beetle host trees are shown in this slide, maples in the top left, birches, buckeye and horse chestnuts, elms, willows, poplars and sycamore. Here are those same host trees are listed again. They are listed in order of the incidents of infestation that we ve detected here in Ohio. What I mean is by far and away, the most common infested tree that we find in Ohio are maples. That s why their first listed here. And if you breakdown maples into individual species, we find the most red maples infested followed by sugar maples, box elder, silver maples and Norway. After maples, willows and elms. And those are almost tied as far as numbers are concerned followed by buckeye, poplar, birches and sycamore. Now there are most host species or genera for the Asian Longhorned Beetle. Those are shown in yellow. The reason why I colored separately is to remind me to tell you that even though Asian Longhorned Beetle can complete its lifecycle on those host trees, we have not detected any infested ash, mimosa, katsura, mountain ash, golden rain tree or hackberry in Ohio. And furthermore, hackberry has recently been crossed off the host list. Further research done has shown that the earlier data showing that Asian Longhorned Beetle could complete its lifecycle in hackberry was deemed not

4 Page 4 appropriately conducted. And further studies could not confirm that the ALB could complete its lifecycle in hackberry. This slide is a map of the Northeast and portion of the Midwest of the US and Southern Canada. And it shows where the Asian Longhorned Beetle infestations have been detected in that area on the backdrop of where the maple forests are. So the maple forests are shown in yellow just to give you an idea of where these locations are in relation to a primary host forest. The first infestation was detected in Brooklyn, New York in And that infestation is still active. Eradication has not been declared there. The next infestation was detected in Chicago, Illinois in Then, back to New Jersey. And that New Jersey infestation is considered - the research and genetic testing suggests that that is a separate introduction form the New York introduction. The New Jersey infestation has been eradicated. After New Jersey, there is a detection in Canada in Ontario in the Toronto area. That happened And that infestation has been eradicated. That leads us to the Massachusetts detection in Wooster, Massachusetts. That happened in That s still an active infestation larger than the Ohio infestation. In fact, they re quarantine area is almost twice as large as the Ohio quarantine area. There is a smaller infestation detected in Boston which was thought to have been from a localized movement of ALB from Wooster to Boston. That was only 6 trees. And that infestation has been eradicated in Boston. And then to - that brings us to Ohio. The infestation in Ohio was detected in Here s the State of Ohio. The red blobs down here in Clermont County are - show our current quarantine

5 Page 5 areas. And here s another map, a zoom in of those quarantine areas. Asian Longhorned Beetle as far as we know is localized to within those red lines. These two smaller satellite - we call them satellite quarantines are directly attributed to the movement of infested firewood from within Tate Township which is the main infestation. You will also note in this map shown that our quarantine includes all of East Fork State Park and of course, the William H. Harsa Lake as well. Another thing to note here is that this is the Ohio River. And right over here is Kentucky. Kentucky is approximately 6 or 7 miles from our quarantine area. A thing to note is that it is illegal to move regulated articles such as firewood or other host material for Asian Longhorned Beetle. It is illegal to move regulated articles that are inside these quarantine areas to outside of those quarantine areas. And our regulatory team spend a great deal of time and energy enforcing the quarantine. They also do a lot of other work. And that s what shown in this map. All the various dots are the locations where our program has received calls from concerned homeowners or park rangers or managers or whatever. They call and they ve seen some of our outreach material and say Hey, I see something that looks suspicious. It looks sort of like some of the images I ve seen online, on our website or in the newspaper or in an that my friend got. And I m concerned. Can somebody come check it out? You ll see a vast majority of those calls have come from areas very close to our quarantine area down here. But they are scattered across Ohio and even into some of the bordering states. So these are all the calls that our office has received. There are other plant protection and quarantine offices in these other states. And they receive their

6 Page 6 own set of calls too that aren t displayed here. But nevertheless, our regulatory team respond to all these calls. It s much better - we view it as much more preferable for us to respond to negative calls then to somebody saying Oh, I don t want to bother those people. I see something that looks suspicious. But I m not going to bother calling in. And then have it happen to be actually the real thing. So we respond to all these calls. If it s not out of our office, it s one of our other plant protection and quarantine offices in the State of Ohio. And what we do there as well as in our quarantine area is we survey. What I mean by that is we scan the host trees and look for signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation. So the map on the left shows the zoom of Tate Township in Ohio which is the main infestation of our quarantine. And the different colors represent how and who did our survey work there. So for example, the light green work - the light green colors indicate that our contractor which is Davey Tree Care, spend some of their ground based survey crews out to scan those trees with binoculars looking for signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle damage. We also have climbers that work in our program. And they will climb up the trees. And as you can imagine, they get a better view from up there. And they re able to see parts of the tree that would otherwise be not visible from the ground. And it s these methods that we look for signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle. And when we are out surveying, we look for the beetle itself as shown here. The beetle is only visible in a narrow window of timeframe. Emergence in this

7 Page 7 area doesn t usually occur until the end of May or the beginning of June and will - and adult beetles could be visible up to the first heavy frost. But they re hard to see. We rarely see adult beetles. Although we do see adult beetles, but it s rare. What we re typically looking for when we re out surveying are holes. Some sort of holes that indicate that an adult beetle was there. Let me zoom in on one of those egg sites or over position scars. And you can see in the zoom in that there are these grooves cut on the sides of these over position sites. Those grooves are mandible scars. So the mouth parts of the beetle - of the adult female beetle chews into the hole sort of like a - if you can imagine a pair of scissors opening and closing, back and forth. And it kind of chews a hole into the tree that way. And that s where the female will deposit an egg. We also look for emergence holes or exit holes. Those are about 3/8ths of an inch in diameter. We do what we call a pencil test. If the pencil goes straight into a whole for an inch or two, that s a sign that it s Asian Longhorned Beetle. Other insects can also create similarly looks hole. But they re at a steeper angle. So we look for these types of emergence holes. We ll also look for what we call frass or insect excrement. As the larva tunnel through the (unintelligible) material and eat, it displaces a lot of wood. It has to go somewhere. It goes back out the hole that the beetle was over positive - that the egg was over positive in. You can see the mandibles on the side of this egg site and the frass kind of pouring out of that egg site. In heavy infestations, you can see that the frass collects at the base of the trees. They will also collect in branch unions and

8 Page 8 crotches. We ll also look for active infestations. Signs that larva and beetles are in those trees. Now this slide shows it s a rather fortunate occurrence. Some of our surveyors were out and about and saw active infestation, frass pushing out. And figured they would keep an eye on that tree every day for several days. And one day they saw this. And I m going to let these slides auto advance relatively quickly to show how this adult Asian Longhorned Beetle emerged out of this tree and cuts itself its own exit hole. So I find it rather fascinating how it is very careful about cleaning its hole. Making it so its just perfectly around and can emerge. The surveyors that took these snap shots, the whole process took about an hour and a half. And they took pictures every couple of minutes. But a lot of them were the same. So they were just cut out. But soon after that beetle showed up on that tree fully emerged, it was captured and killed. And now rests in an alcohol jar for display. Let me transition to - now to an explanation of who we are with Asian Longhorned Beetle program. So as most of you are probably aware being government employees, we re under the executive branch, the Secretary of Agriculture is part of the President s cabinet. And some of you might - if you re extra quick you would see that my graphic is a little bit outdated. It doesn t have the Department of Homeland Security on there to give you an idea of how old this is. So within the Department of Agriculture, there s a secretary of course and then several agencies. I don t expect you to be able to read what all those agencies down here are. But this one circled here has the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service circled. Within the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, there are

9 Page 9 several programs. Plant Protection and Quarantine is one of those programs within APHIS. And then within APHIS, there are lots of subprograms of which the Asian Longhorned Beetle program is. Our authority comes from the Plant Protection Act of That s a law passed by United States congress. And interpretation of that law is codified in the Code of Federal Regulations. The one specific to the Asian Longhorned Beetle Program is shown herein this Title 7 in chapter and subparts. Those are published in the Federal register as a Federal order followed by interim rule and eventually a final rule. Interesting to note, the State of Ohio publishes what we call parallel rule so that being a Federal entity technically we would only have authority to regulate on a state level, like the whole state. But with the publication of the parallel Ohio laws and rules, we are able to regulate - even being a Federal entity, we re able to regulate in a portion of the state smaller than the entire state. Those codes are - get further implemented - or the regulations get implemented in manuals, standard operating procedures and guidelines. And those are often published online as well to be transparent for the public so they know what - or they can understand what to expect if Asian Longhorned Beetle does arrive in their area. So if it does arrive in their area, what has happened in all the other infestations is the eradication program has been created and starts to function with prior success as I showed earlier. And the gist of that eradication program relies on removals. We will remove infested trees as well as high risk host trees. And I ll explain a little bit more about that later.

10 Page 10 But we just don t come and take somebody s trees. And they come home from work and find all those trees missing and not know anything about it. We go through a vigorous process to provide notification to the homeowner and give them a chance to take part in the work plan development for their specific property and the removal of those trees. Then we cut the trees, we deal with the stumps. We will - we like to kill stumps either by stump grinding or herbicide treatment so that they can t re-sprout and be a potential food source for beetles in the future. We do clean up after ourselves and restore the property. And we give the property owner a chance to sign off on that work - on the work plan that was developed with their input to basically say, Yes. You did what you said you were going to do. And then we often offer replanting in various areas as well. I mentioned we - the high risk host tree removals. And I want to talk about what makes a tree a high risk for Asian Longhorned Beetle. First here shown is that - the tree has to be a host tree for an Asian Longhorned Beetle. And not only that, it also would have to be within relative close proximity to an infested tree. And that distance is set at a ½ mile based off of research showing how far an adult beetle is likely to fly. And the reason why we would remove high risk host trees is this. Lightly infested trees are extremely difficult for our surveyors to detect and could be missed easily otherwise known as a false negative. Also, the longer an infested tree is allowed to remain as suitable is an Asian Longhorned Beetle habitat, the longer it can be a source of disbursing more Asian Longhorned Beetle adults. And that s why we remove high risk cause

11 Page 11 trees. There are two infested trees shown in this slide. The one on the left is a heavily infested tree. That s relatively easy to pick out primarily because of the canopy thinning that s going on. The tree next to it is also infested. It s more likely infested. And at this point, it looks relatively healthy just from a superficial standpoint. But nevertheless, it s infested and could produce more adult beetles that would perpetuate the infestation. But if you were see that lightly infested tree and happen to miss the signs of infestation, that tree would be a false negative. So here s some numbers to support what I just said with - there s been quite a bit of research into this. Our ground surveyors, if you have 10 infested trees, they ll only find about 3 of - 10 lightly infested trees, they ll only find about 3 of those trees as infested. The climbers, they ll be able to pick out 7 of the 10 lightly infested trees. So we miss. We miss infestation. And because we miss infestation and we know that we miss infestation, it makes sense to clear other trees adjacent to infested trees to account for what you know that you re missing. I want to work through a graphic illustration that further describes this high risk host removal. So they ll be green trees. That ll be what we call un-infested host trees. The red trees are lightly infested host trees. The orange and red trees are also lightly infested host trees that get surveyed. They re not detected. And this monster tree here is a heavily infested tree. And those are like I mentioned earlier, easily detected. Here s 160 Asian Longhorned Beetle host trees and one confirmed heavily infested host tree. The beetles emerge and from the heavily infested tree and

12 Page 12 can infest neighboring trees at a light level. So let s say they infest 100 trees in the vicinity of that confirmed infested tree? We go in and we ll survey from the ground typically for starters. And like I mentioned, we ll find 3 out of 10 or 30% of those trees as infested. And so we ll go and remove 30 of them including the heavily infested tree. So that s leave 70 lightly infested trees behind. So let s say we have the resources and the climber staff on hand that we need. And then we go and send the climbers into that same woodlot to follow behind the ground surveyors. And like I said earlier, they ll detect 7 out 10 or 70% of lightly infested trees as infested. And 70% of 70 is 49. So we remove those 49. And we re still left with 21 lightly infested trees. Those are now false negatives. And can serve as a source for natural spread. Beetles will emerge out of those lightly infested trees and perpetuate the infestation. But not only that, if somebody were to go and harvest those trees and then move that material, although it would be illegal, that would lead to human assisted spread which can be a lot further than natural spread. Also those lightly infested trees over time will become heavily infested trees and continue to perpetuate the infestation which is why the most effective Asian Longhorned Beetle eradication tool is unfortunately the chainsaw followed by the chipper. So this shows a woodlot where we ve done our survey work. You can see the red slashed infested trees. You can also see some trees here with a blue dot. So the red slash indicates an infested tree. Here s a host tree with Asian Longhorned Beetle with no signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle damage were detected.

13 Page 13 And so it got a blue dot. After we ve gone through and removed just the infested trees, your left with the woodlot that now looks like this with the just the blue dotted host trees left which would likely - if they re not infested, will likely become infested and probably should have been removed as high risk host trees if we had property owner permission. The beetle just doesn t stop at woodlots. It will also infest yard trees of course. And we remove a lot of landscaped trees, signature pieces of people s properties and yards that they grew up playing under as kids or their granddad planted that signify their birth or whatever. We deal with all those kind of situations. And it s rather heartbreaking. But nevertheless, we go and remove the infestation. And like I mentioned, we do clean up after ourselves. We - in some cases, we ll grind the stumps. In most yards, the property owners want their stumps ground so they can reclaim that part of the yard and do something with it. All the debris is brought to a chipping yard or what we call a marshaling yard. It gets ground in a chipper which kills any larva that would be in that material. And then we make it available for free to residents in the Tate Township quarantine or in any other quarantines for that matter. And whatever is left over, we make the contractor doing that work disposed of. We ll go spread grass seed and straw over where the stumps got ground. And sometimes that s a lot. And some larger properties. And we do our best to make it a clean operation so that property owners, even though traumatized by the removal of those trees, nevertheless have a nice looking yard after we re done. So this map, I ll let the slides auto advance.

14 Page 14 The green dots indicate trees that we detect as infested. The grey dots indicate those same trees after they get removed. And there s - so there s two slides per month. There s a detection side and then a removal slide for that same month. And - and the purpose of these slides is to show you how our detections have spread in the localized area of the Tate Township as well as the stone lick and other satellite quarantines. Those are showing as insets on the left. And we re - it ended up here in March of Just one thing to point out. Proximity to Federal lands that are part of the East Fork Recreational area, we have detected infested trees along the south southern border of those Federal lands. Here. The all over here. And also up in this area on the eastern side of the southern part of the East Fork Recreational area. And this pointer here shows - points to where the initial detections were found. So also another tool in our eradication toolbox are chemical treatments. Shown in the bottom left are Arborject Injection guns and on the right are Mauget capsules. They both do the same thing. They re pressurized instruments to push Imidacloprid chemical into the trees that - as a systemic pesticide, the tree takes up that material and spreads the material throughout the canopy. We ve only conducted these chemical treatments in our two satellite quarantines. And that s what s shown by the map on the left is our Stonelick and Batavia quarantine. And then right at the heart of it is our treatment area. And on the right is our - another satellite quarantine, the Monroe Township satellite quarantine.

15 Page 15 And in the heart of that satellite quarantine is where we did treatment. This area here, we didn t just skip that area. But the property owner at this property elected to have his host trees removed instead of chemically treated which we did. To give you some numbers as far as where we re at with the program, Tate Township, the detection was first made in June of We ve conducted over a million surveys. There have been over 15,000 detections of infested trees. We ve removed over 14,000 of them. And as this number goes up, so does the removal number. So there s always number of standing infested trees. We can t immediately turnaround from detection to removal. There s always a little lag time. We ve also conducted a great deal of high risk host removals in Tate Township. And we re close to 40,000 high risk host removals there. We haven t done any chemical treatments in Tate Township. But we ve done quite a bit of replanting of non-host trees primarily in yard trees or landscape settings. In our two satellite quarantines, we detected a total of 50 infested trees in those two satellite quarantines. We ve done a - we ve still done high risk host removals in one of them, in the Monroe Township satellite quarantine. And we ve also done a great deal as I mentioned of chemical treatments there and some replanting. Other areas including the East Fork Recreational area, we ve done a lot of survey work there and still haven t found any signs or detected any signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle which is a great thing. But we ve still taken some preventative measures within the part closest to those infestations that we re shown just a moment ago.

16 Page 16 And we ve done some high risk host removals there. And we ll continue to consider that as an option in the future. And with that, I want to thank a lot of individuals including organizations such as the United States Army Corps of Engineers. They ve been great people to work with. And with that, I ll take questions. Courtney Chambers: Great. Thank you, Phillip. Operator: All participants are all in interactive talk mode. Courtney Chambers: Okay. So at this time, you re welcome to unmute your phone line and ask Phillip a question. Or you can send your question through the chat box. (Linda Nelson): Hey, Courtney, this is (Linda Nelson). I have a question. Courtney Chambers: Okay. (Linda Nelson): Thanks for that really informative presentation. One question. You mentioned that you have done some genetic testing. That the New Jersey infestation was genetically different from the New York population. And I was wondering about the rest of the infestations. Has there been any work to show whether those are all new populations and new introductions? Or is there human assisted spread between you know initial populations one place versus - you know that moved to another? Do you... Right. So the genetic testing hasn t been all conclusive. But I have seen some of that data. And I think it s safe to say that detections that have occurred in each state or the introductions that have occurred in each of the various states,

17 Page 17 those have been - those populations have been genetically distinct indicating on one level that they are separate introductions. But within those states, like what happened in Ohio for example, the two satellite infestations were of the same genetic background as what came from the main infestation. And that s similar to in Boston or in Massachusetts I should say. The Boston detections were genetically similar to the main infestation in Massachusetts and Wooster. And similarly in New York, there are several localized infestations that are somewhat removed. And within the state, those infestations, those were mostly considered human assisted movement within the state. (Linda Nelson): Thank you. I have another question too if you can tolerate another one from me about the chemical treatment. Could you mention again? I didn t hear it what the active ingredient of the pesticide that you re using. Sure. It s Imidacloprid. (Linda Nelson): Okay. Okay. Which is a neonicotinoid. (Linda Nelson): Yes. Okay. Great. And then is that a strategy to kill the high risk trees? It s a prophylactic. So if it - we don t treat infested trees. So the larva that would - would be in the heart wood could potentially already be in the heart wood of an infested tree. They could potentially escape the chemical application because the chemical would be mostly localized to the outer tissues.

18 Page 18 So we don t treat infested trees. We only treat high risk host trees. (Linda Nelson): Okay. Thank you very much. And those are only treated in certain areas where we have a high competence that the chemical application will succeed. (Linda Nelson): Thank you. Courtney Chambers: Phillip, on the topic of host trees, I received a chat question earlier on when you were on the slide of host trees. Yes. Courtney Chambers: That list. And they were wondering, does the list factor in the abundance of the host trees species on the landscape? Basically does... Certainly. Courtney Chambers: Okay. So the prevalence as maples as a host isn t necessarily due to the larger abundance of maples? Or is it? So there s research that show s that Asian Longhorned Beetle prefers maple. In fact, red maple over other species. Courtney Chambers: Okay. So it s that, plus red maple is the predominant species here.

19 Page 19 Courtney Chambers: Okay. So both. Yes. So both in Ohio. Courtney Chambers: Got you. Both have contributed to the incidence of Asian Longhorned Beetles in the maples. Courtney Chambers: Okay. Thanks. (Mike Vissichelli): Hey, Phil. This is (Mike Vissichelli). One of the slides you had on there showed the limits of the areas of infestation. There s about a half a dozen or so. Is that as far as it is right now? Is it only those limited areas? In Ohio, there are only 3-3 regulated areas or quarantined areas. And that is the extent of known infestations in Ohio. (Mike Vissichelli): Now what about the ones outside when you showed New York and Boston and some of those other ones. Are they outside those areas you had shown? Or is that... So for example, in New York there are a handful of infestations or where I should say. So Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Long Island all have separate quarantines contained within. Some of those quarantines - or some of those infestations have been eradicated. For example, Manhattan and Staten Island have been declared eradicated. But the other infestations are still considered active.

20 Page 20 (Mike Vissichelli): Okay. Courtney Chambers: Phillip, what does it take to be considered eradicated? What s the timeline? Or I guess - yes? So we have to go 4 years after the most recent detection with finding no detections before we would declare eradication. Courtney Chambers: Okay. And there are areas that have been declared eradicated or not yet? Yes. There have been areas declared eradicated. Courtney Chambers: Okay. So Chicago, Illinois. That infestation was declared eradicated. Boston in Massachusetts has been declared eradicated as well as New Jersey and several of the smaller quarantines within the New York infestations have also been eradicated. Courtney Chambers: Very good. Thanks. (Mike Vissichelli): This is (Mike Vissichelli). I have one more quick question. On the - you said that they re chipping the wood. And that actually kills the larva. I mean I was just wondering how does that work since you still have part of the wood there? They re can t complete their lifecycle without the life tree or? That s essentially it. So if the larva are big enough, they will get - so we have a chipping size restriction. So the chip size has to be one inch, at least one inch or smaller and two dimensions. And the chip size of that size will - if

21 Page 21 there are larger larva, they ll get chipped. They ll get chopped up in that process. If the larva are smaller than that such that they could still remain intact after being chipped, the chipping process is violent enough that they re rattled. And the chip pile environment is drastically different enough from a standing tree that they re - as far as temperature and moisture content, that they re no longer able to complete their lifecycle and emerge from chip piles as adults. (Mike Vissichelli): Thanks. Courtney Chambers: So have you all encountered many commercial stands of trees up there that you ve had to treat or chop? Thankfully, there haven t been any nurseries in our regulated areas. We are close to a nursery up in Batavia Township or near our Batavia quarantine I should say. But thankfully, we haven t - we haven t touched them yet. Courtney Chambers: Okay. If that s what you meant by commercial. Courtney Chambers: Right. That s what I meant because I was thinking of economic impacts versus you know the nostalgia of a tree in a yard or something like that or just a scenic aspect of it. If there was some - if many people saw an impact economically. Well, on that topic, certainly. This area is big for firewood. Courtney Chambers: Okay.

22 Page 22 There are several firewood distributors. And we - our regulations and our program has definitely had an impact there. Courtney Chambers: Okay. Do they have - I mean is there like insurance programs or anything that have stemmed out of the Asian Longhorned Beetle? None that I m aware of. Courtney Chambers: Yes. Okay. That s just a loss in those instances. Yes. They either have to adjust by moving their operation to a different location outside of our quarantine or just sell to the local area and insure that it doesn t move outside of the quarantine. And provide documentation of such to our program. Courtney Chambers: Okay. (Damian Walter): Hello. This is (Damian Walter). What s the - with the chemical treatments, the insecticide, do you have anything as to the effectiveness or persistence of effectiveness for how long it lasts? So. That s a great question. We - our program conducts chemical treatment or I should say we try to conduct chemical treatments 3 years - 3 consecutive years in a row. So after one year of chemical treatment, some of the trees will show high levels or high enough levels to cause mortality. But other - it would be inconsistent. Other trees might not show high enough levels. And then that consistency with regards to the level of chemical in those host - treated host trees, it gets

23 Page 23 better with the 3 repeated treatments. And I am told that that will persist for a couple more years after we stopped treating. But then after that, we would have to do something else. (Damian Walter): Okay. They retreat it again or start serving those trees again or something else. (Damian Walter): Along the question Courtney had as to the economic, on the side has there been any I guess with - you said you have some landowners, I don t know they may have small timber lots or whatever that have chosen or denied any form of treatment. Do you run into issues between them being - well, with them being a source. But basically adjoining landowners having issue or even taking legal action for damage to their property because somebody did not take action. Did you have any engagements like that? No. But I could foresee all of those things happening. Yes. Yes. So luckily, that kind - it hasn t come to that here yet. And for that matter, we have not had to take legal action to gain access to a property yet. We have gone down that road with a number of property owners. But before it gets all the way through the process, we ve been able to come to an agreement. (Damian Walter): That s good. Yes. Hopefully it stays that way. (Damian Walter): Yes.

24 Page 24 Courtney Chambers: Have you found that that s mostly - I mean is it just a matter of how you approach them as opposed to - or you know what s been the challenges in that? Or what brings them around? Are they just like, Oh, okay. They re serious. We don t want to go to court. Or I don t know is there any lessons learned from that? So what it really comes down to - so I have a lot of thoughts about this. The area where our quarantine is in Claremont, Ohio is very conservative politically speaking. And so there s kind of an anti-government or anti- Federal government I should say general attitude out there. Not with everybody of course. But I think the people that are resistant to our program and our efforts to control this beetle start off with that attitude. Courtney Chambers: Yes. And then it s had to reason people out of that even - no matter how data or scientific support you can provide. But typically they come around. But what really does it is when they get to the point and they realize that they would have to pay for a lawyer. Courtney Chambers: Right. If they wanted to continue with their refusal. And once they realize that they would have to pay for something on their own, they usually - well, in every case, they have opted against doing so.

25 Page 25 Courtney Chambers: Got it. Just one other question from me, Phillip. Is the chemical treatment pretty cost effective? Or is it pretty outrageous and so it s going to be pretty localized or? That s a great question. On a per tree basis, it is very cheap to treat when compared to the cost of removing a tree. But there are several other considerations we have to make before we will conduct those chemical treatments. Courtney Chambers: Right. Okay. One is that the chemical treatment are no 100% effective. So there are documented cases of treated trees where for whatever reason, the chemical isn t evenly distributed throughout that tree. So the beetles are - the trees still get the - the trees still gets infested. And the beetle completes its lifecycle and is able to perpetuate the infestation. So with that, the cost of chemical treatments in the long term could potentially be much higher because with the infestation that continues to be perpetuated, that would mean that our program would continue to have to be funded for years longer. And so the cost of - and those trees are still left standing when they re treated. So they still would have to be resurveyed. Courtney Chambers: Okay. So when you look at it just you know tree to tree, it s a lot cheaper to treat a tree than to remove it. But in the long term, it s cheaper to remove that tree because it can no longer be infested or be part of the infestation process. And -

26 Page 26 which would mean that our program would be - could be potentially ended sooner. And - which would be a lot cheaper in the long run than funding the program for several more years. Courtney Chambers: Okay. I see. Thank you. Yes. Courtney Chambers: Alright. I ll give an opportunity for a last question. Okay. Well, with that, Phillip, do you have any closing comments for us? Well, I thank all of you very much for your time. And again I m thankful for the Army Corps and what collaborators they ve been through this process. Courtney Chambers: Well, thank you very much. It s been a pleasure having you share with us your experience with the beetle. And participants, thank you all for joining us today. Our next invasive species webinar is right around the corner scheduled for May 6th on the topic of Zebra and Quagga Mussels. And that s going to be presented by Mr. Tim Toplisek from Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters. So please watch your for additional information regarding that meeting. And I hope you all have a great afternoon. Thank you again, Phillip. You re welcome. Thanks, everybody. END