Three-step plan to save Longfellow ash trees

Look around the Greater Longfellow neighborhood on a beautiful summer day and you’ll see a sea of green: stately shade trees arching over roads and homes. About one in five of those trees is an ash.

Ash trees are under imminent threat from emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle from China. If they aren’t treated, they will all die in the next few years. If nothing is done, Minneapolis will lose 20% of its trees.

Unlike most cities facing the ash borer crisis, Minneapolis is not implementing any treatment plan. Instead, the city is removing all ash trees preemptively (even healthy trees). The city is planting baby trees to replace the ash, but it will take many years before these get big enough to confer all of the important benefits mature ash trees provide today.

Longfellow will be vastly different without ash trees

A 2012 inventory of public ash trees in Longfellow, Cooper, Howe, and Hiawatha found 1,679 trees. Some have since been removed, but most are still standing. Losing all of these trees would pollute the air, raise heating and cooling bills, lower property values, negatively impact the health of residents, and diminish the arresting beauty of Longfellow streets and parks.

The Saint Anthony West and Marcy Holmes neighborhoods have organized to treat hundreds of neighborhood ash trees. Longfellow can do the same.

The Longfellow Environmental Action Team (a project of the Longfellow Community Council Environment Committee) is organizing a multi-part project to save as many neighborhood ash trees as possible, on both public and private land.

1. Part one is a tree-ribboning event to raise awareness of the prevalence of ash trees and to illustrate what the community would look like without them. Community members are invited to gather at Hiawatha School Park at 11am on Sun., July 17. Volunteers will help put ribbons around every ash they see. The ribbons will list a website (SaveLongfellowAsh.com) where folks can learn more. Contact Anni L. Murray (Annilmurray@gmail.com) to sign up.

2. Part two is a fund drive to collect donations to treat public trees on boulevards and in parks. Residents will be able to help guide the selection of trees for treatment. A donation page will be up from early July to mid-August. Trees will be treated in August.

3. In part three, The Environment Committee will provide matching grants to residents to help them treat large ash trees on private property. Applications for this program will be posted on the Longfellow Community Council website and on SaveLongfellowAsh.com.

The pros and cons of treating ash trees

The city’s decision not to treat ash trees with insecticides was heavily influenced by the community’s desire to protect pollinators. The insecticidal treatment for Emerald Ash Borer is injected into the tree and is primarily retained in the trunk. Ash trees are wind-pollinated; they flower for five days a year. According to a report from three prominent entomologists: “It is highly unlikely that bees would be exposed to systemic insecticides applied to ash.”

The danger to pollinators is small. The danger of not treating, to the community and environment, is great. For example, the city of Minneapolis estimates the loss of ash trees will result in 100 human deaths.

Scientists across the country recommend removing sick trees and treating healthy ones to minimize the impact of emerald ash borer on the natural environment, and on people. Visit the project website for links to this research.