Insect infestation leads to downing of St Catharines ash trees

15,000 ash trees are being cut down in St Catharines to stop the invasion of the emerald ash borer.

It’s a pest that’s infested trees in many parts of Ontario, making them brittle. The fear is the limbs could snap and kill or injure someone.

The high priority trees right now are the ones that are half-dead. By 2015 they expect most of the infested ash trees in St Catharines will have died.

Forestry foreman Gavin Pally told CHCH News “with the emerald ash borer, as it’s an introduced pest, what we’re finding as it compromises the tree in a way that it compromises the base, and so a year after the tree is dead, it’s snapping off at the base, regardless of small, medium or very large.”

The 15,000 trees to be taken down are all on public property. That’s about 10 per cent of the trees in the city of St Catharines.