My complaint:
Body (environmental project) PSHB is an invasive species are killing trees in Claremont, these infestations are rapidly spreading. Therefore, action needs to take place by the municipality as well as all members of the community. Unfortunately, the issue at hand has very limited solutions that members of the community are able to practice. Correspondingly, we are limited to trying to prevent the spread of these species instead of fighting it head on.
Recently, we have treated the unaffected trees that are in proximity of the affected trees with universal plant food to ensure those unaffected trees are as healthy as possible and therefore less vulnerable to infection. We will be monitoring the progress every week to make sure that our method has been effective.
Furthermore, we have taken pictures of the affected trees with the specific coordinates and posted it on iNaturalist to firstly, promote awareness of the effects of PSHB and secondly to contribute to the PSHB monitoring system that has been put in place by Paul Barker, Consulting Arborist. We hope to see positive results over the next few weeks and that these measures will be sufficient to prevent PSHB from spreading.
Suggested solution:
As a member of the municipality, we urge you to act as you have much more resources to protect our trees than all the members of the community. We have compiled some ways in which you can help prevent PSHB spread. We could start by cutting down heavily infested trees to prevent PSHB amplifiers, limiting the infestation to a small number of trees. In addition to that, the municipality can dedicate dumping sites for these infested trees and if possible, provide machinery that would properly discard of infected wood. An online help desk could also be made available for local members to properly identify this species, educate them about the side effects and what to do when an infested tree is identified. These methods could possibly prevent more trees from dying until a solution that does not involve cutting trees can be found.
