85 per cent of the trees in Gore Park are doomed
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/38...rk-are-doomed/
More than 85 per cent of the Gore's trees are being cut down as the downtown park faces a déjà vu massacre.
Only 11 of its 74 ash trees have been deemed salvageable as the city scrambles to battle an infestation of the emerald ash borer — an invasive beetle from Asia that has destroyed hundreds of thousands of ash trees across Ontario.
Nine ash trees have already come down in Gore Park.
Over the next 10 years, 54 more will share the same fate — and the city has yet to decide what will be planted in their place. What they can say for sure is the park will be bare for years as the canopy slowly grows back.
The emerald ash borer was first detected in Canada in 2002 in Windsor, where it killed nearly every ash tree in Essex County.
When the trees were planted, they were placed too close together, so there's no room to integrate new trees until the old come down, said Tami Sadonoja, the city's project manager of forest health.
Without a concrete plan for the replanting process, the city can't give an exact timeline on how long it will take for the new trees to grow to mature size.
"Our goal is to have the same amount of canopy that we have right now … but yes, that will take years," Sadonoja said.
Without its green canopy, Hamilton is facing a replay of 1983 when the city chopped all of the park's trees as part of a "Downtown Action Plan," sparking widespread outrage.
"We've been through a Gore Park tree massacre before. It was quite a scandal at the time," said local environmental activist Don McLean.
Maples, elms and birches — all were cut down and replaced with ash trees and walkways as the city aimed to make the park "more pedestrian-oriented and accessible," a city employee told The Spec at the time.
As it sets out to revamp the park once again, McMaster biology professor Jim Quinn advises the city to diversify the species of new trees going into the Gore.
"Planting any kind of monoculture is a stupid idea … the bottom line is to replace with other native species," he said.
"If they are all different species, then if you run into a pest like this you won't lose the whole forest."
The emerald ash borer was first detected in Canada in 2002 in Windsor, where it killed nearly every ash tree in Essex County. The bug also destroyed nearly all of the ash trees across lower Michigan.
The invasive pests — whose larvae burrow in and feed just under the bark, damaging the layer that transports water and nutrients throughout the tree — are expected to kill almost all of the 23,000 ash trees in the Hamilton area over the next decade.
McLean said action should've been taken when we first learned about the invader.
"Once we got reasonable info that this entire species was threatened, we could've started taking action to begin the replacement process … planting new trees in the expectation that they would grow to a reasonable size before we have to take the others down," he said.
In the fall, the city approved a $26.2-million plan to tackle EAB over the next decade. Of that, $100,000 per year will go toward injection treatment to protect existing trees, and $1.6 million per year will go toward tree removal across the city.
Jack Radecki, an arborist with the Ontario Urban Forest Council, said, "There are very few trees that can still be treated, unless they were treated two years ago. And if the tree is already infested, it cannot be treated."
In Gore Park, just 11 trees have been designated salvageable through the injection treatment — at a cost of roughly $200 a pop (which is required every two years), depending on the size of the tree.
The city will do its best to keep the remaining 54 trees as long as it can, Sadonoja said — but eventually, they will come down.
While officials haven't decided which species will replace the park's ash trees, Sadonoja said the city will definitely be planting a more diverse collection.
"I think we've learned a lot over the years in the industry, and you know there's been a number of pests and diseases that have gone through and wiped out entire species," she said.
Elsewhere in the city, the first phase of removal and injections is under way, with expectations to begin replanting this summer. A wide variety will be planted — including tulip trees, hackberries, Kentucky coffees and serviceberries.
These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.
"It depends on a lot of things … underground utilities, lot size, overhead hydro, things like that," Sadonoja said.
Radecki encourages homeowners to look up facts about the emerald ash borer online and either treat or remove the ash trees on their properties.
No ash trees are safe from the EAB, he said.
"This insect has a very high potential for spread and insemination. You can have hundreds or thousands of adults come out of a single tree … and with good wind, they can blow five or 10 kilometres."
"It's hopeless, it really is hopeless now," he said.
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