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The emerald ash borer is in town and this beetle is no summer tourist.

From Beaconsfield in the west to Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in the east, the destructive insect continues its unrelenting assault on ash trees across Montreal.

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Dr. Robert Lavallée, an entomologist and research scientist with the Canadian Forestry Service, is part of a joint federal and municipal effort to halt the spread of the EAB in Montreal using biological control methods, including deadly fungi-baited traps and parasitic non-stinging wasps.

Two wasp-release sites have been set up in Montreal at the Botanical Gardens and Bois-de-Liesse nature park.

Lavallée has inspected more than half the 200 traps he set in a handful of Montreal boroughs; to his astonishment, he recently found three traps in Ahuntsic-Cartierville containing some 600 beetles.

“It was amazing. I’ve never seen such high numbers, but I have to say this is the first time I was in this area. If I had put my traps last year I could have collected maybe 1,000 beetles.”