Ellsworth may spend $100,000 to fund a two-year program to protect its ash trees from a destructive invasive insect spreading across Maine.
The presence of emerald ash borers was confirmed on Mount Desert Island last April, adding to a growing list of infestations in many parts of the state.
The invasive wood-boring beetle kills ash trees by feeding on their inner bark, nearly always ensuring the tree’s death within three to four years. The insect has wiped out tens of millions of ash trees in North America, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Since infestations were detected around Mount Desert Island, Bangor and Hermon, Ellsworth is weighing a treatment program that could protect the city’s ash trees from the invasive species. Emerald ash borer was first found in Aroostook County in 2018 shortly after its detection across the border in Canada’s New Brunswick.
The city may add the program to its budget to establish an ongoing funding mechanism to defend its trees against the insect. The treatment must be repeated every other year to remain effective over the long-term, which would require the city to re-fund the program every other year.
Roddy Ehrlenbach, the city’s parks and recreation director, said the insects represent an “imminent regional threat” to Ellsworth trees. Most forest management plans recommend starting prevention measures when an infestation is within 15 miles — Ellsworth has met that threshold, Ehrlenbach said.
“There’s very little investigating left to be done,” Ehrlenbach said. “We just need to assume that it’s here, and we need to deal with it.”
The parks director stressed the need for the city to take preventive rather than reactionary measures. Ellsworth has 510 ash trees in its public right-of-way — alongside buildings, sidewalks and roads — and over half the trees on the library’s property are ash, which are not included in the right-of-way count, Ehrlenbach said.
Without preventive action, the city’s ash trees could all die, Ehrlenbach said. Removing infected trees would cost more than treating them, he added.
“The cost of doing nothing: if we think this is expensive now, the cost of removing and replacing
dead ash trees in the future will be far more expensive than preemptive removal or treatment of our current tree assets,” the city’s tree steward Michael Otzwirk and councilor Tabatha White said in a joint statement.
The money would likely be used for the most effective treatment for emerald ash borers: chemical tree trunk injections. The method delivers insecticides directly into the tree’s vascular tissue, killing both larvae and adults for up to two years.
The measure is only a temporary solution while state and federal authorities test for biological interventions to replace chemical treatments, Ehrlenbach said.
While several city councilors have expressed their support, City Manager Charles Pearce isn’t sold on the request, saying he’s actively trying to cut budget costs, not add to them. He proposed pairing municipal funding with private donations or grant matches to soften the city’s fiscal responsibility.
The funding request comes from the city’s Arbor Commission, an advisory body established in 2023 to protect Ellsworth’s urban tree canopy. The commission launched a three-year tree planting program in November 2024 after securing a $173,000 federal grant.
That grant has funded and will continue to fund tree planting from the High Street corridor to the city’s waterfront Harbor Park.
The commission also received $20,000 in funding — from state grants and local donations — to develop a comprehensive forestry management plan that includes safeguards against invasive pests. The plan is nearing completion, Ehrlenbach said.
In January, the city named Danielle Gift, Ellsworth’s director of urban planning and development, as its Tree Warden, who oversees the assessment and management of all public trees. Gift is a certified arborist and previously designed New York City’s emerald ash borer response plan.
Last month, the city announced it would host a community tree steward, funded by the AmeriCorps as part of the Maine Conservation Corp program, to organize some of the city’s urban forestry initiatives. Otzwirk will update the city’s street tree inventory and organize the planting of over 80 trees.
“Weighing whether or not we want to preserve some of our trees or live through the devastating effects of losing our ash trees, all we have to do is look at the incredible loss of canopy from the spread of Dutch Elm Disease,” Otzwirk and White said. “The response from the public here in Ellsworth [was] to create the Arbor Commission ordinance in 1991.”