Joe Meating only has to gaze out his downtown office to visualize what havoc the emerald ash borer could wreak on trees along Queen Street.
“It would have a huge impact on the aesthetics of the downtown,” says the president of BioForest Technologies Inc., who categorizes the beetle as a tree species killer.
The voracious and colourful green bug that makes a meal out of ash trees has landed in the backyard of his Sault Ste. Marie forestry biotech company.
In September, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed the alarming presence of the emerald ash borer in a city neighbourhood, not far from a Canadian Forest Service lab where Meating once worked as an insect control officer.
It is the first time the insect has been found in Northern Ontario.
Fortunately, Meating knows how to kill it with an environmentally-friendly pesticide. He’s still waiting on securing federal government approval to market it in Canada.
The company is commercializing their product, marketed as TreeAzin, in the U.S. with an all-natural pesticide and special tree injection device that does wonders in stopping the insect and other tree-munching bugs. They are also shooting for organic certification.
TreeAzin uses an active ingredient called azadirachtin, derived from neem tree seeds in India. It has proved effective in U.S. field trials when applied with a special applicator at killing the hatched larvae in the tree tissue as it begins to feed.
Meating is not surprised the insect has made its way North. The bug decimated ash trees in the U.S. Midwestern states before spreading into southwestern Ontario in 2002. He suspects it could have jumped the St. Mary’s River during a 2005 outbreak in Brimley, Michigan.
If the infestation can be contained to an isolated pocket, there is an opportunity to control the population, he says.
The bug can be spread by people transporting contaminated firewood, logs, branches, chips and other ash wood. However, Meating says, the little winged critters can fly as far as 10-kilometres a day with a good tail wind.
The big trouble is the emerald ash borer is spreading faster than Canadian regulatory approval is coming.
“In Canada, we’ve been spinning our wheels for eight months, no response,” says Meating.
Ironically, the neem formulation, which was first developed in a Canadian government lab in the Sault -- the Great Lakes Forestry Centre -- has been approved for commercial use by U.S. regulators, but has yet to be made legal by Health Canada.
This year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted BioForest Technologies conditional approval (common for new pesticides) to sell and use TreeAzin anywhere in the states. The company had been performing field trials with the U.S. Forest Service for years.
“It took us six months to get registered in the States and we’re still waiting for a meeting here in Canada. It’s been very, very slow.”
Earlier this year, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) did grant the company an emergency (or temporary) registration to sell TreeAzin to tree care companies to contain a bad outbreak in southwestern Ontario near Windsor and London.
With no other answer to stop the bug, aside from the widespread cutting and burning of infested trees, this stop-gap measure was hoped to be the company’s first step toward receiving full regulatory approval in Canada.
Health Canada spokesman Paul Duchesne says the Ontario-wide emergency registration expired Aug. 31 and the department has not received another, nor has it “received any applications to register Azadirachtin for the control of the emerald ash borer in Canada.”
Though ash is not a huge commercial forest product, Meating says city foresters on the island of Montreal are nervous since ash trees represent 24 per cent of the canopy. Ash is the tree of choice by many municipalities for its ability to thrive in urban environments.
Meating has been contacted by the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s forester, a tree care company and a city councillor to begin the discussion of a local treatment plan for 2009. “Things are starting to move and there definitely is interest and concern.”
With the treatment season over, the bug will go into a resting stage over the winter until next June when the beetles emerg to lay their eggs and the next cycle begins. Treatment will be timed as the eggs are hatching and the larvae begin to feed.
