Originally published on January 27, 2021 9:27 am
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The U.S. government has lifted a quarantine on an invasive insect, the emerald ash borer, that s killed many trees in Massachusetts and Connecticut. But critics of the change have been more vocal outside those states.
The emerald ash borer was first discovered in the U.S. in 2002 in Michigan. The federal government soon instituted a quarantine there on ash products, which restricted their movement unless the wood had been treated first.
The quarantine zone spread as the bug infested more states and with good reason. The insect can kill ash trees within three to five years, according to Tawny Simisky, an entomologist at UMass Amherst.