All Ash Not Treated in 2024 Will Die

Save Your Ash Chicago
Comments to Chicago Urban Forestry Advisory Council 12.7.23

At this moment Chicago is on track to lose all but 5,000 of our 43,000 street ash trees in two
years at an approximate cost of $38M* to remove them instead of having saved them.

Save Your Ash Chicago has since 2021 been publicly warning of this completely avoidable,
grievous environmental loss to our urban forest which is our first line of defense against the
ongoing climate catastrophe.

Due to incredibly short-sighted policy and an erroneous belief based on outdated science that
ash trees cannot be saved, in addition to ignoring the successful model of Milwaukee, a city that
has not lost a single one of its 26,000 ash trees since it started inoculating them in 2008, the
great city of Chicago is on track to lose all but the 5,000 ash now planned to be treated next
year.

This is because we are in the last three years of the eight year death curve for ash once they
are infected with EAB. Once infected ash are untreatable or die within eight years. All ash in
Chicago are considered infected. The last time any ash were treated by Forestry was 2018, five
years ago. The ash death curve model predicts that right now of the about 43,000 ash on
Chicago's streets 16% of them are untreatable or dead. That’s 6,329.

The untreatable and dead rate doubles every year. The model predicts that because they were
not treated this year (2023) next year in 2024 32% will be untreatable or dead. That’s 13,760.
Year six.

That leaves us with 29,240 treatable ash next year in 2024, year seven. There is $1M in
funding and an RFP that calls for only 5,000 ash to be treated. One contractor has been
chosen. It is absolutely imperative that all of the $1M be used to treat ash next year. The
treated ash will be the only ones left.

This is because the ash death curve model predicts that by 2025 100% of untreated ash will
be untreatable or dead.

The average cost to treat is $100 per tree. $1M divided by $100 is 10,000 trees. This body must
do everything possible to make sure those 10,000 are treated, not just 5,000.


Thank you,
Nancy Wade


Nancy Wade and Ashley Woodthorp
Co-Chairs Save Your Ash Chicago SYAC
[email protected]
https://www.saveyourashchicago.org/


*$38M is the cost to remove the dead 38,000 trees at about $1,000 per tree.

*The chart Delaying Action Kills Trees minute 19:23 of Prof. Sadof's Nov. 3, 2022 presentation "Long-term ash tree protection from Emerald ash borer".


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