Monitoring and Managing Ash Training Workshop workshop on Thursday, August 2, from 1:00-4:00 PM at the Nicandri Nature Center.

Contact: Paul Hetzler, Horticulture and Natural Resources Educator, Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, phone (315) 379-9192 ext. 232

The emerald ash borer (EAB), an invasive beetle which is lethal to native ash trees, has been confirmed in Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties, as well as very near the southern border of Jefferson County. While the news is generally bad, a program called Monitoring and Managing Ash (MaMA) offers a ray of hope. Developed by the Poughkeepsie-based Ecological Research Institute in cooperation with the US Forest Service, MaMA offers tools to help citizens identify ash that may show some natural resistance to EAB. It is believed that these so-called “lingering ash” may hold a genetic key to finding resistant strains of ash, thus saving them from extinction.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, in cooperation with the Nicandri Nature Center in Massena, is pleased to announce that the Ecological Research Institute will present a MaMA workshop on Thursday, August 2, from 1:00-4:00 PM at the Nicandri Nature Center. Attendees will get hands-on field training in using MaMA’s citizen-science and land-manager tools to identify lingering ash, those trees that remain healthy while others around them succumb to EAB. Propagating these potentially EAB-resistant trees is the best hope for ash conservation.

Jonathan Rosenthal, Director of the Ecological Research Institute, and senior scientist Dr. Radka Wildova, both experts in EAB ecology and management, will teach the workshop. The event is free and open to the the public, but class size is limited, so pre-registration is required. To pre-register or for workshop information, call (315) 379-9192 extension 232 or send an email to Paul Hetzler at ph59@cornell.edu.