Build community capacity to protect existing trees by one or more of:
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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For smaller cities: at least one volunteer is a Minnesota Certified Tree Inspector or a Minnesota Forest Pest First Detector. |
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At least one city staff member is a Certified Arborist, a landscape horticulture professional, or holds Tree Inspector and First Detector certification; city staff provide free assistance to residents/businesses, or support volunteer community forestry efforts. |
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At least one staff member has a Tree Risk Assessment Qualification, certified Municipal Specialist, or is a Certified Treecare Safety Professional; City has written and begun implementing a community emerald ash borer preparedness plan/climate change adaptation plan for urban forests including resilient tree species and EAB wood waste management; Engage volunteers in advanced volunteer stewardship such as through a Tree Steward program. |
Resources
- See Model Request For Proposal Components for Emerald Ash Borer Management (2018), which includes components that a city can incorporate into its standard request for proposal (RFP) form to obtain private company bids for preparing an EAB management plan, and components that a city can incorporate into its standard RFP to obtain private company bids for ash tree injection services.
- See the Model EAB Management Plan (MN Shade Tree Advisory Committee: 2015), which provides background and direction to cities on how to deal with EAB through adopting landscape-based management policies and practices. The Plan is based upon minimizing total life-cycle costs of the EAB infestation by 'saving the best [about 20%, with emamectin benzoate], replacing the rest,' and enlisting private owners of ash. See the Purdue University free, on-line cost calculator that enables one to enter tree inventory and cost data so as to compare costs of three different treatment and removal strategies. While the calculator does not let one compare costs to the resultant benefits, there are tree companies such as Rainbow Tree Care that can compare both the costs and the multiple health, energy, GHG, cost and environmental benefits of a variety of different strategies.
- See a simplified EAB Cost-Benefit & Emissions Calculator produced in 2019 by the MPCA's RETAP program.
- Regional Resource Directories to assist MN cities in taking action to protect and enhance their urban trees, and EAB resources from the MN Dept. of Agriculture including Guidelines to Slow the Growth and Spread of Emerald Ash Borer. Also note that regionally based MN DNR Cooperative Forest Management (CFM) Foresters can assist your city, as they have a small percentage of their time dedicated to urban and community forestry (UCF).
- Emerald ash borer resources from the MN Extension, and become a certified Forest Pest First Detector. A "5-10-15" tree-diversity rule-of-thumb for reducing the risk of catastrophic tree loss due to pests is to aim for city tree canopy with no more than 5% of any one species, 10% of any one genus, and 15% of any one family. See BPA 16.3 for "best native yard trees for our changing climate."
- Details on becoming a MN Certified Tree Inspector from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources; recertification happens at the annual March Minnesota Shade Tree Short Course. Note that crowd-sourcing apps have been used that allow residents to participate in EAB protection efforts.
- See the 2019 state agency report Emerald Ash Borer in Minnesota, which has 4 recommendations and a hierarchy of ash tree material management.
Sublist
a. Having trained tree specialists.
b. Supporting volunteer forestry efforts.
c. Adopting an EAB/forest management plan or climate adaptation plan for the urban forest.
Order Number
6