They're called Emerald Ash Borer, and the tiny little beetles are an ash tree's worst enemy.The invasive species have destroyed more than 20 million ash trees, but for the past four years, foresters from Michigan Tech are working to slow down the destruction.â??After we pull these from the ash trees, we will look for the Emerald Ash Borer adult beetles, and we're just trying to figure out the extent to which the population has distributed itself throughout this area,â?? said Brian Feldt, forester.Once the beetles are collected, the researchers record the information, and it's sent directly to a database at Michigan State University."It's integrated with all of the slow ash mortality project data from this site and from other sites so that it can be looked at to analyze trends across the different sites," said Andrew Storer, professor at the Forestry Department at Michigan Tech.
In June, MTU foresters injected the ash trees with insecticide to prevent the beetles from laying their eggs inside the trees. After a couple of years, the trees will be inspected to determine whether or not they'll need another injection, but in the meantime, researchers will continue to remove the purple traps from the ash trees.