Posted on 06/05/2026 6:54:22 AM PDT by metmom
America Spent $12.5 Billion Fighting the Emerald Ash Borer. The Woodpeckers Did It For Free In 2002, a beetle from eastern China arrived in a Detroit shipping crate and went on to kill more than 100 million American ash trees. The federal response cost $12.5 billion. It did not stop the beetle.
What did stop it was already in the woods. Four native bird species — and one parasitic wasp the size of a sewing needle — quietly built a predation pyramid that no quarantine, no insecticide injection, and no government program had ever designed.
This documentary follows the decade of bark-peeling, camera-trapping, and citizen-science data that revealed how the hairy woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-bellied woodpecker, the white-breasted nuthatch, and a native wasp called Atanycolus cappaerti turned a continental ecological disaster into something foresters now call "lingering ash" — young trees that are starting to survive in the same counties that lost everything fifteen years ago.
Filmed in the spirit of long-form ecological storytelling. No AI narration. No clickbait. Just the slow, real work of a forest doing what biologists never asked it to do.
If you spend time on land that has been hit by the emerald ash borer — Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, anywhere east of the Rockies — drop a comment below. Are you seeing the woodpeckers come back? Are your young ash surviving? The ground truth from the people who live there matters more than any federal report.
Hit subscribe if you want more long-form work like this. Real research. Real characters. No AI. No filler.
Are you seeing the woodpeckers come back? Are your young ash surviving?
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No and no
Today on a Saturday I got up at 6.
Made coffee.
Put dogs out.
Folded laundry.
Went in hot tub with coffee.
Made breakfast.
Weed wacked entire yard 1 1/2 hours
Went to the dump.
Stopped to pick up eggs at local farm.
Then dog food and venison from daughters freezer
Mowed lawn with 52” Skag commercial mower.
Then blew out garage, patio, mower, side walk with leaf .blower
Brought Adirondack chairs up from basement.
Vacuumed family room.
Then made a Lemon chello spritzer.
Mrs is taking a shower while I sit on patio.
In laws and sister inlaw coming over for BBQ in half hour.
The lake side of my property is filled with ash trees that are about 12 to 20 inches in diameter. I’m wondering what I should plant to replace them when they start dying. I was thinking about a few tamaracks.
Blue ash may be somewhat resistant to EAB due to a higher tannin content. Research is still ongoing.
I’m planting more that are native to our area, such as sugar maple, white birch, and white spruce.
I get the seedlings from the state forest nursery for a great price.
Also, we are fortunate to have a lot of black birch on our property and so far there’s nothing attacking that. And it is the hottest Burning firewood we have found yet.
And it smells wonderful when cut. Wintergreen. Mmmmmmm.....
Mountain ash is too, but it’s not the classic ash tree.
However the sap suckers love it and almost killed it.
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