Over the past three weeks, city-hired contractors in St. Paul have cut down 309 ash trees within the Highland National and Highland Nine golf courses.

Another 175 ash trees will be removed from the Como Golf Course next month. Across the city this winter, many of St. Paul’s residential streets are in for an equally tough and thorough pruning.

“It’s a big portion. It’s noticeable,” said St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert, who represents Highland Park. “We’re spending $1 million a year trying to contain ash borer, and it’s not enough. It’s going to get worse.”

Eight years after the emerald ash borer beetle was first spotted in an ash tree in St. Anthony Park, the larvae of the invasive insect continue to chew through the city’s canopy of ash trees. In fact, they’re spread in all directions. City officials say more than 97 percent of the city now sits within the infested area.

“We’ve already identified more infested trees than we removed in the entire year in 2016,” said Clare Cloyd, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Parks and Recreation. “Not only is it still around, it’s progressing even faster.”

The concern is statewide, and national. The beetle, first discovered in the U.S. near Detroit in 2002, has been detected in more than a dozen Minnesota counties, from the Iowa border to Duluth.

In addition to parks and golf courses, the city of St. Paul will remove roughly 900 trees from city streets in January and February, about double the haul from previous years, said Rachel Coyle, an urban forester who coordinates St. Paul’s emerald ash borer program.

REMOVING HEALTHY TREES

That’s because since 2010, the city’s “structured removal” program had focused on removing damaged trees in areas with high concentrations of ash trees — streets and parks planted in a mono-culture of ash. Trees growing under power lines or already declining from symptoms unrelated to emerald ash borer, such as storms, drought or salt, were the first to go. This year, the approach has changed. Related Articles Neighborhood girl finds and returns chef Justin Sutherland’s stolen knife roll

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The city’s new strategy is to remove ash trees from infested areas, regardless of whether they’re visibly damaged or dying. Given the rate of infestation, in a few years’ time those trees would be dead anyway, say city officials, and falling trees or branches would pose a danger to everyone.

“You can’t wait until there’s 18,000 dead boulevard trees,” Coyle said. “It’s not something we’d be able to manage.”

The city hopes to replant multiples species of trees in the spring as they’re able, but budgets probably won’t allow one-to-one replacement.

Once a citywide assessment is complete, more information will be posted to St. Paul’s “Structured Removal” website.

“The timeline for replanting is more or less unknown at this time,” Cloyd said. “We’re aiming for the spring, but we’re focusing on removals (right now).”

GREEN BANDS RAISE AWARENESS

As part of an awareness campaign, the city has begun wrapping green bands around ash trees on Grand, Summit, Cleveland, Cretin and Marshall avenues. Those trees won’t come down this year, but will be removed eventually, and the bands are intended to help the public understand what ash trees look like.

Minneapolis rolled out a similar educational strategy several years ago. The St. Paul bands say “Emerald Ash Borer Kills Ash Trees” and lists the city’s EAB website: stpaul.gov/eab.

“It’s hard. We wouldn’t wish that this were the case,” Cloyd said. “We are doing what we can, and what we need to do. A dead tree is very hazardous. And the way to slow the growth is to begin removal of these trees.”

Highland Park resident Gloria Zaiger joined the city’s tree advisory panel a year ago hoping to hear that wasps, tree injections or another management technique will kill the beetle larvae. She’s now convinced that will only buy some time.

“The city is doing the best they can,” Zaiger said. “Maybe with injections you can save your own tree, but to do it on large swathes of public land. you just can’t do that. The river bluffs, Hidden Falls, Crosby (Farm Regional Park), are covered in ash. What are you going to do?”

Tree removal this season will take place throughout most of the city’s 17 planning districts, including along a long swath of Shepard Road from Randolph Avenue to the High Bridge.

Crews have already cut down trees along a few blocks bounded by Lexington Parkway and Chatsworth Street, mostly from Minnehaha Avenue down to Lafond Avenue. In the North End, trees will come down in a long section between Jackson and Agate streets, from Magnolia Avenue down to Sycamore Street.

“Within every given area, we’re not taking every ash tree. We can’t,” said Coyle, noting the city still has some 18,000 ash trees on its right-of-way after seven years of removals. “We’ve identified specific streets.”

In 2011, the city began treating healthy ash trees throughout the city by injecting their trunks with insecticide to prolong their lives. The city will inject more than 1,000 trees this year, and more than 3,000 in total. Related Articles Trump and Biden hit the now battleground state of Minnesota

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“We’ve pretty much identified all the trees that we are going to be treating,” Coyle said. “Every three years, the tree needs to be treated again.”

Tolbert, the council member, sits on the board of the League of Minnesota Cities, where he has advocated for state legislation to fund city efforts to contain invasive tree species.

“There’s issues that you find, and there’s issues that find you,” said Tolbert, who has become the city council’s unofficial point person on the issue.

“In past years we’ve spent about $1 million a year in taking down and replanting trees,” Tolbert said. “If the ash bug gets to northern Minnesota, it will be devastating. Quite frankly, what the foresters are saying is the only thing that has kept it down here is huge temperature drops in the winter. As our winters get warmer, it may spread north.”

ON THE WEB

To learn more about St. Paul’s emerald ash borer infestation, go to Stpaul.gov/EAB.