“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Benjamin Franklin
As shown in the graphic below, non-native pests and disease spread can start slowly and later pick up momentum. This causes forest health to be placed on the backburner to the many pressing issues urban forest managers face. Additionally, local governments and city leaders tend to focus on the here and now, not what and when. That short-term planning can be costly. Cities who neglect to plan for anticipated threats will spend much more to respond and recover than those with strategies and resources already identified and initiated.
Public Information Campaigns
Public information campaigns can help build support, understanding, and collaboration for city leadership, staff and community members.
Campaigns stress the importances to city staff, who may not be aware, that early action on non-natives is their least expensive option.
At the same time, campaigns in collaboration with trusted community messengers and that incorporate community members feedback, builds knowledge and capacity in how their community can address their vulnerabilities to non-natives.
Imitate, Don't Recreate
The best places to look for guidance may be states and cities that already have strong forest health programs.
Below is one example and a sample checklist.
The State of Washington Urban Forest and Pest Readiness Playbook
This is a comprehensive guide to the process and actions that underlay successful forest pest programs. The Playbook includes a comprehensive tool that can measure your community’s capacity to mount its own tree health initiatives.
Even a quick review of the Playbook’s checklist can reveal where changes and improvements are possible and where to take the results.
Recruit Your Team
Success depends upon having the people, resources, and coalitions already in place to address current and emerging pests and diseases.
In Washington State, for example, all level of government share responsibilities managing forest health and resiliency.
Organizing your own team
To create your forest health team, bring together people who know where to find the latest information about pests and disease that might invade your community. Assign responsibility for detection, response and determining which efforts seem to be working and which are not.
No need to reinvent the wheel
Hundreds of communities have done this before you — some successfully, others not so much. What’s common to those who’ve succeeded? All players understand their roles, responsibilities and lines of communication before they respond to looming threats.
Fortunately there is already a system in place that – while not exactly plug-and-play – can be adapted for virtually any sort of disaster, and at multiple scales.
The Incident Command System
Originally developed to manage multi-agency responses to large wildfires, the Incident Command System (ICS) has evolved into a framework applied to disasters of all kinds. Today, virtually all emergency medical services and disaster response agencies use ICS to manage disasters which demand coordinated action.
The ICS focuses on the importance of clear, concise and targeted internal and external communication; training and retraining to ensure understanding of roles and responsibilities; and ultimately, creation of both organizational and personal networks to build trust and credibility among its members.
Train before, train often, act later.
FEMA can help with training materials.
Engage Volunteers
It doesn’t take an army of professionals to identify invaders. Residents are often eager to sound the alarm. In a study of 70 invasive pests in Washington State, researchers found that residents reported them first in 36% of the cases.
In fact, Donna Massey, a Massachusetts homeowner, first discovered the invasive asian longhorned beetle in her own backyard.
Recruiting and training volunteers
Many communities have developed programs that enlist residents — often members of local conservation groups — as community scientists. These modest investments can produce dramatic results. Often, residents are the first to identify new invasives.
Washington State maintains extensive and comprehensive programs to identify and manage invasive forest pests and diseases. Volunteers play an outsized role in these initiatives.
Volunteer conservation programs already exist in most communities. And often, local conservation groups carry the message about invasives. They can become working members of your team with some additional training and education resources tailored to your community’s needs.
Planning and Policy
No coach would put together a game plan just before kick-off. That happens during the off-season. The same applies to planning your response to invasive pests and diseases.
Most plans share a similar foundation: they’re built around the principles of Integrated pest management.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
IPM aims to minimize the impact of pests while supporting sustainable practices and maintaining ecosystem balance.
IPM encompasses a spectrum of approaches that communities might use in responding to potential threats. In some cases, the most cost-effective response might be simply to “watch and wait. Moving down the spectrum, some communities may elect to remove afflicted trees, while others choose to apply pesticides on a broader scale.
Key principles of IPM:
Identification and Monitoring: Accurate identification of pests and continuous monitoring to make informed decisions.
Setting Action Thresholds: Establishing a point at which pest control action must be taken.
Prevention: Managing the environment to prevent pests from becoming a threat.
Control: Evaluating and using the most effective and least risky control methods, including biological, mechanical and chemical controls.
Make it law?
Some jurisdictions have chosen to embed IPM principles into their municipal and/or state codes. Having a legal basis for action makes it easier to determine the best response to any given threat and promotes public understanding of why bold actions are needed.
Austin, Texas has committed to IPM and mandates compliance by developers, builders and property owners.
Funding
Management costs millions...
…maybe billions!
No single municipality can set aside funds to deal with disasters like the invasions of Emerald Ash Borers or Asian Longhorn Beetles on its own.
Emerald Ash Borer
Costs nationally exceed $10 billion
- Minneapolis lost 40,000 trees, 20% of its public canopy
- St. Paul and Minneapolis have spent in total $50 million to date
- Both cities have a multi-year backlog for stump removal, at an estimated cost of $200 per tree
Asian Longhorned Beetle
- New York City removed 16,000 trees to “beat the beetle.” It’s a work in progress.
- The cost to remove a single infested tree can range from $500 to $5,000.
- New Jersey removed almost 22,000 trees before it declared the pest eradicated in 2013.
Share the burden
Rarely will you need to depend on purely local resources. Because invasive species don’t respect municipal or state boundaries, significant resources and support may be available from state and federal agencies.