Billions of ASH Trees are dying. Step by step procedure to save them...

A billion trees billion ash trees in Minnesota and all of them are going to die if they're not treated. Every untreated ashtree will be killed by emerald ashbor. There is concerns once they run out of a food source, once they kill all the ash trees that they could move to a different food source. Huh? My mom had to trees out. That's what it would do. The whole Your mom's trees died. Well, yeah. It's been going on for a while. Remember, even the last year, even the park had a sign up that the wild or whoever disease is going to be out there pulling down trees for a while. We've got four or five, maybe six dead trees, and I think we got one or two that we can still save. So, I think we're going to try to save them. So, I'm going to go meet Wes from Pro Tree and we're going to look at a spot where I guess along a street or something. The entire thing has just been wiped clean. This disease that's going through just tore everything apart. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. 2 years. I think it's been hitting pretty hard. I had to sneak and turn the camera. My wife doesn't like to be on the videos. And yeah, don't worry. I won't get in trouble. She never watches them anyway. Let's go meet up with Wes. Stan, good morning. How are you? Good. How about you? So, new guy to the crew. So, this is the trees that you guys were talking about, huh? Yeah. You You see why I wanted to come here? Wow. So, are these all elms? Ash. Okay. So, it's ash. Elm was the old disease that came through, right? Yep. Elms were impacted by Dutch elm disease. Yes. Which is a disease. Um it's Dutch elm disease is a systemic fungal pathogen. Okay. Uh and what's what's unique about Dutch elm disease is it can't just move from tree to tree. It has to harbor on another insect to be transmitted to another tree or uh be transferred through rip grafting. So trees where the rips are interconnected. Yeah. But uh ash trees, an emerald ashbor is an insect of its own. So as soon as it finishes feeding on one tree and it's killed that tree, it just flies to another one. So this isn't like a pathogen. This is being destroyed by insects. It is the insect that's killing the tree. So So it's a kind of a completely different thing that So let's take a look at these. Maybe you can help us identify what we're looking at and how we can, you know, early early signs, right? Sure. So where did these things come from? So, emerald ash bar originally was uh discovered in Michigan back in 2002. Uh since then, it's wiped out about 80% of the ash trees in Michigan. And back in 2009, it was discovered in Minneapolis. Um it originally got its way to Michigan. It came over on a big boat uh inside of a shipping pallet. The insect harbored in a shipping pallet, came across the ocean from Asia, and then hopped off the ship in Michigan and started eating a so. And it didn't take very many of them to get to epic levels, right? No. It took a little bit of time though for people to figure out what it was. You know, ash started dying in Michigan. And they they were able to figure out pretty quickly that was an insect that was doing it was a war, but they didn't know what it was, where it came from, how it got there. So, they had some catching up to do in Michigan uh back in 2009. Made its way to Minneapolis, and then since then, the population has slowly been building up, and now it's hitting like an really high. you know, population's up there and it's swooping through the metro all over the place, killing tens of thousands of millions of ashes. Is it across the nation right now? Uh, yeah. You know, I don't know exactly. It's in tons of different states. It's in anywhere there's ash trees, there's emerald ashport right now. Oh, so it is across the nation. Yeah. It's just not at epic or plague proportions everywhere. No, but some places are much worse than we are. Like Chicago is like they've already lost all their trees. They're all dead. But unless they're treating them, but they've lost thousands and thousands thousands of trees in Chicago and uh parts of Wisconsin are really bad. And yeah, it's it's all over the country. Anywhere there's ash trees, there's going to be emerald ashore. There's a billion of them. Wes, there's a there's a billion ash trees in the state of Minnesota. I know that answer. In some communities, up to 60% of the canopy is ash. I mean, we look at this property here. Yeah. this. I mean, there's a few other trees that have been planted more recently, but 90% of the canopy on this property is ash. So, they're going to lose 90% of their trees. They already have. They're dead. This is all up and down this road. If I'm looking, I can see them not just here. Next building over, next building over, next building over. Because all these properties were built in the late ' 80s, 90s, early 2000s. And emerald ashbor likes to travel up and down highways and main roads because one of the main ways it travels far distances is it gets on vehicles in firewood. Um that's how it kind of moves around. So we always find it first off of main [music] highways. Huh. I'd like to see what one of these things looks like. I don't think we'll be able to find them today. [music] Uh they're very small and fast and once they kill a tree they they just kind of move on. Uh there's lots of pictures of him on the internet. I was just going to say Dan the man. Let's pop a couple pictures up for these guys. Right here. This is the boar. What he did. We could we could take a look at uh what an exit hole would look like though. Here's a couple of exit holes right here. That's what she said. See if Dan can focus in on that. You notice how they're shaped like a D. They call it a D-shaped exit hole. Oh yeah. There's the the flat part and then circular on the bottom. Right. It's cuz it's a flatheaded bore. When they exit the tree as an adult, that's they create they create that D-shaped hole. And how how how the emerald ashbor kills the tree. It's not the adult beetle that actually kills the tree. The adult female, she she's going to come to the tree. She's going to lay her eggs in the furrows or the galleries of the bark. They're going to hatch as a pupy larvae or also called an agralis. And that argalis is going to bore into the tree and live underneath the bark in the tree's vascular system for up to two years feeding on the camium, the xyllem, the plum tissue, basically cutting off the flow of water and nutrients up the trunk of the tree. And then and then when we see these exit holes, the damage has already been done and they're they're exiting as an adult. And they're either if the tree is alive, they'll they'll stay on the tree. They'll lay their eggs here. Or if the tree is dead and there's nothing else to them there, they'll fly and find another one. Will they infect any other trees at this time? No. But there is concerns once they run out of a food source once they kill all the ash trees, that they could move to a different food source. More. Yep. Like what happened with like twoine chestnut war that killed all the chestnut trees. uh they started infecting our n or they start feeding on our native oak trees afterwards. Another question we get a lot of is what happens if I don't treat my ashtree and just let it die? Can I just cut it down? Um and the answer is yeah, you cannot treat your asht tree. You can let it die and cut it down. But the issue with doing that is these trees are very dangerous to remove. Uh at our company, we actually have a policy that we we won't let our guys climb dead ash trees because they're basically stripped of all their water and they become very brittle and they break unexpectedly. So if we're removing dead ash trees at Prot, we only do it with the assist of an aerial lift or a crane. And even when we're doing a crane removal, we don't let the climbers climb on the trees. Um so it's better to remove them preventatively if you're if you're not going to treat them. Preventative removal is better. It's cheaper. It's easier. It's more efficient to So, you have you have two options. Treat them or just cut it. If you're not treating it, just cut your tree. Cut it down and do it before it dies. Yeah. Because it's going to go no matter what, it's going to go. Correct. Dang. All right. What else should we know about these things? Um, on average, you can treat these trees for about 25 to 30 years before it outweighs the cost of the removal. Um, the reason these trees haven't been cut down yet is this is just assumptious. Probably this building can't afford it. I mean, it's probably 10, $20,000 to cut all these trees down and grind the stumps and then they want to replace where if they would have been more proactive and taken a preventative treatment approach. Um, they'd be much less expensive. They'd have a small price every 2 years to keep them alive and healthy and then they can continue to enjoy them. the shade that they provide, the water retention, you know, the grass is all brown and dying here now because it's not being shaded. So, the lawn guys probably aren't super happy about it. It's just it's a lose-lose for everybody. All right. But it's my understanding, Wes, that you're actually going to show us step by step how to treat an asht tree, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, we're going to go to one of your sites where you're contracted to do that right now. Correct. Yeah. We got a job just/4 mile down the road here. All right. So, let's go to his job site. Let's check out what they do and we'll go take it from there. He's a flipping maniac. We're going to treat one now. We've been under contract with this property for probably six years now, treating these trees. So this is the third treatment cycle that these trees have received. So they they receive a treatment cycle every two years. Correct. Yep. Every two years. As long as they continue to do that, we will uh we'll be able to continue protecting from our dashboard. Okay. So you tag them as well. I see that. Yep. So all of our trees are tagged. Um a so you know when we come back to retreat them, it's easy for us to find them. Um you know, our company's information is on there in case the property is sold or someone's curious what's going on. And then we have a tree specific tag number so we can look back in our records and see where this tree was, when it was treated, how much chemical was applied, all that kind of stuff. How much do you charge for something like this, Wes? You got tape. Uh, we got a couple of different factors, but a tree of this size would be between like 100. excuse me, like $2 and $250 to have treated and that's got protected for 2 years and we provide 100% guarantee that the treatment will protect the asht tree from emerald a dashboard. What happens if it doesn't? We refund the money that they spend on the treatment. Okay. We won't cut it down for free. [laughter] We get asked that all the time. We'll take it out for free. We don't do that, but we'll give them their money back. Okay. Okay. We're we're really confident in the equipment that we're using and the chemicals and the processes that we've developed to manage this insect and that's why we're able to provide that guarantee. Well, Tyler gets set up here. I'll just kind of run you through the equipment that he uses. So, these are our Q connect kits. They're uh designed and manufactured by Rainbow Scientific. Uh there's a few different pieces of manufacturers that are making this equipment for specifically for ashport treatments, but um this is a plugless method and uh we found it works really well. Uh the chemical that we're using is mectonite. Comes in this super cool bottle. We always joke about u making mechanite vodkas cuz it's like this cool blue color kind of like you know UV vodka or whatever. Mhm. Um but uh the the the the important part of this is the active ingredient which is called emomectobenzoate. Emomectoenzoate is the ingredient that's been found to be able to protect ashtrees from emerald ashbor for 2 years. So there's a lot of different manufacturers of insecticides. They're specifically designed for emerald ashbor. But as long as they have mctobenzoid in it, uh they're going to do a great job of controlling emerald ashbor in your ash trees. So the first thing you got to do is measure the diameter of the trunk so you can calculate the amount of chemicals that go in it. Yep. So this tape takes the circumference of the tree, divides it by pi, and converts it to exact trunk diameter. So this is a 31in asht tree. Okay. So then do we care about the height of the tree? Yes, you we do have to take into consideration like canopy density, canopy width, size. um that will just you know 31 in will tell us a starting point and then Tyler will adjust that rate. You know if it's got a smaller canopy he might you know back the dosage off a little bit. Very very seldom do we do that but generally if this had a huge canopy for the size of the trunk he would then increase the dosage. So what what we got here this is what we call our harness. Okay. And our harness has T's on it. These are the T's. Um, so what these T's allow us to do, uh, they have a valve that we can turn on and off to control, uh, when we want to start applying the chemical. And, um, this is a plugless system. So, basically, we drill a small hole in the tree and then this like I don't know, it's like tapered or something, but you insert in the tree and twist it a little bit and it it actually locks in there. It seals on there. We'll show you that in a minute here. What do you mean a plugless system? So, there's other manufacturers that use plugs. So, you insert uh basically an arbor plug into the trunk of the drill hole, insert a plastic plug, and then put a needle into that plug. Okay. Um we've just found that, you know, it's it's not necessary to put the plugs in. They take longer to put in, and we found that in certain instances, it can cause an infection and can actually cause some damage to the tree. Oh. So, we've gone with the plugless system. It's a smaller hole. It's much quicker and more efficient to set up and it's better for us. Huh. Yep. We're treating it to protect it from animal. Yeah. They are treating that one. Wes. The city's doing that one. They used to use arbor jet with the plugs, but they might not the T's. How far apart do you have a rhyme or a reason to it? Yes. So, Tyler took 31 in and divide it by two. So, he's doing what 15 or 16 T's. Oh, okay. So, they should be about two diameter inches apart from one another roughly. But the general rule of thumb, we just kind of do this one. you know, the devil horns type thing. Well, space about that far apart. But what's more important is finding a good place in the trunk flare to uh install them. And the reason that we go low in the tree, we could actually inject the tree up high here. Uh but trunk wood is meant for vertical movement of water and nutrients. So when water gets to the trunk, it it flows straight up the tree. The reason that we do it down here towards the flare towards the base of the tree is in the flare that's where all the butcher switch come back together and we get lateral distribution. So we want that chemical to remove move around the tree first and then travel up. So that way we know that we're going to get chemical throughout the entire canopy. The way you talk about trees, I'm guessing you live, breathe, and eat trees. Do you dream about trees too, Wes? I dreamt about trees before. [laughter] I think that's how that's how me and you got connected. I watched uh something you had of like a Milwaukee chainsaw. Like you had the first one. Yes. And I watched it and I went to bed and I had a dream that I was running it and I messaged you online like, "Stan, I need that chainsaw." You're [laughter] like, "Yes, you do. Let's check this out." We got them all in all the way around. Just checking to make sure all the valves are closed so that when I pump it up, it doesn't just start blowing it right in there. Okay. So, you pressurize it first. Yep. So, we pressurize it first. Okay. Got to run around the whole system. That's what I was showing at least. Is there a certain amount of pressure you like to pump it up to, Tyler? I usually pump it up to about 50. So, right about there. Okay. we're roughly about, you know, halfway around from where they start and start opening them up. And then we're just kind of doing it slowly to make sure we don't see any leaks come out. So you see all the bubbles moving through here, Stan. Mhm. I mean, that's some of that's air that's working its way out, but also that's the product flowing through the lines. Mhm. And the fact that it's moving quickly is really good. That that tells us this tree is photosynthesizing very well right now, and it's uptaking this chemical quickly. So yeah, it's actually flowing into the tree right now. Okay. Hey, so if these guys have questions on this treatment, other treatments that you've used, just in general, can they reach out and contact you, Wes? Yeah. Can I do this? My information pop up. This there. This one. Dan, he's challenging you right here. [laughter] You want your phone number or email? Uh, call us at the office 6124058733. Uh, you can email me wesprotree.com or our social isprot. All right. Thanks, Wes. [music] Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you showing us through. I hope this video helps some of you guys out. I hope you guys can save your trees if you want to save them. And, uh, let me know what you what you guys are finding out there across the across your neck of the woods. God bless you guys. Go get them. Smash that like button and let me know what you think.