When the emerald ash borer, an exotic wood-boring beetle that attacks ash trees, appears in Iowa, Iowa State will be ready to deal with the cases, said Mark Shour, extension program specialist in entomology.

Known as “The Green Menace,” the beetle is native to eastern Asia and China and believed to have traveled to the United States in wood packing materials, according to a publication from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Shour said the closest case of the creatures is in Victory, Wisc., about one mile from Iowa’s northeast border. They have already appeared in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and parts of Canada.

When this beetle comes to Iowa, it could be a threat to Iowa State’s approximately 1,200 ash trees, Shour said. He said Iowa State is being proactive in order to preserve ash trees before the bugs hit.

“We’ve got things knocking on our door,” he said. Since the beginning of 2009, Shour said, Iowa State has received about 500 phone calls from people who think their trees show signs of the beetles’ presence.

However, efforts to locate them in Iowa have not yielded results. Shour said ash trees 11 inches in diameter or smaller have been placed primarily in the eastern part of the state for monitoring purposes. About a foot of bark is removed from the bottom of the tree all the way around.

“We let the tree draw in any native beetles or any other beetles that would go ahead and feed on it, because the idea is that once you girdle a tree that way, it sends out volatiles — or chemicals — that say ‘I’m dying, I’m dying, come finish me off,’” he said.

Shour said 425 trees were placed last fall. This fall, the trees will be taken down and their bark will be peeled. The bark peeling will reveal the larval stages, the stage in which the tree is most affected.

“It cuts off the plumbing of the tree, so the tree dies because it can’t get nutrients in the water,” Shour said.

To monitor the beetle population in Iowa, there have been purple sticky traps installed in the canopy of trees. Shour said 1,000 traps have been placed throughout the state.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources looked at 2,500 trees this summer to look for signs of the beetles.

“It could be here, but best we know, based on the way we’re monitoring for it, it’s not in Iowa,” Shour said.

The creatures are transported primarily during the summer camping and winter hunting seasons through firewood, Shour said.

“One person could come this fall to hunt, from Michigan or an infested state, and bring firewood with them,” he said. “All they need is a couple of pieces of firewood that are infested; bring it in the state and that’s all it takes.”

Ash trees determined dead or close to death are being removed, he said. The cost of removing an ash tree ranges from $600 to $1,000.

“If we can remove the weak trees on campus — ash trees only — and replant them with something else … then, if emerald ash borer comes next year or 15 years from now, those trees will not be a problem,” Shour said.

Les Lawson, manager of campus services, said Iowa State already has a readiness plan in place.

The plan consists of taking an inventory of the trees and determining their health. Trees deemed close to death or dead are cut down, he said.

Lawson said approximately 20 trees have been removed since last year.

But the plan didn’t begin then.

“About four years ago, we stopped planting ash trees on campus,” Lawson said. “That was the start of it.”

He said the plan, called the Iowa State University Emerald Ash Borer Readiness Plan, is currently being reevaluated. The committee wants to look at chemical application options and possibly partner with the city of Ames to handle the situation.

“We know it’s coming,” Lawson said. “Many places … choose to ignore that it’s coming, and so, when it does hit, they’re going to be totally taken by surprise, but we’re trying to be proactive and not plant so that we don’t have 3,000 trees instead of the 1,200 that we have.”

For the state of Iowa, the beetles mean big money for replacing dead ash trees.

“When this thing comes to Iowa, it’s going to be very costly,” Shour said. “The estimate for Iowa is $3 – 5 billion, and that’s just to take out the trees and replace them and those are generally the street trees. Those aren’t private trees, those aren’t forest trees, those are just the street trees.”

Mark Widrlechner, assistant professor of agronomy, horticulturist for the Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service and curator at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, has been collecting seeds from ash trees to reintroduce the tree to Iowa after the infestation hits and the problem is contained.

“The emerald ash borer … essentially kills all the native ash trees that it encounters, and because of that, we’re really facing an extinction of that,” Widrlechner said. “If we don’t do something about that, we could lose a huge amount of genetic diversity.”

Widrlechner coordinates the seed-collecting efforts between multiple agencies.

“What I’m trying to do right now is just make sure that we don’t lose these species off the face of the earth,” he said. “They’ve been here for thousands of years. They’re wonderful trees for multiple purposes, and my job right now is to coordinate people across the United States to document what’s out there and, if those trees are producing good seeds, to collect the seeds and then get them into the National Plant Germplasm System for storage.”