Montana’s Most Popular Trees Are Being Infested By Insects

It always blows my mind that the tiniest things can often cause the most destruction.

Like, for example, did you know that over the years, mosquitos have killed more than 50 billion people in all of human existence? That's insane, right?

So we should do our best to prevent these guys from coming into Montana, especially for the good of our tree population. The emerald ash borer is a super-small insect (less than an inch in size), that lives and creates a small population of thousands within ash trees. And guess what - ash trees happen to be the most popular tree in Montana, and those insects are making their way over here.

Emerald ash borers were first documented in the US in 2002, and since then they've been traveling from the east to the west. It was only a matter of time before they reached Montana, and it looks like that time is going to be soon.

The good news is, there are ways to deal with an infestation. First of all, maybe don't plant any more ash trees and switch to something else for a while. If you've got ash trees, look for boreholes - they'll be shaped like a "D" in the tree, and the sooner you find it, the better chance of saving the other trees.

So hopefully, this is something that will just be a small annoyance and we can move on. OR the emerald ash borers form an alliance with the murder hornets and the country bows down to its new insect overlords. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.