Most people driving around Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York have probably seen a bright purple box, about two feet tall, hanging in a tree, usually about thirty feet up.  If they are very observant they will have noticed that the box is usually hung in an ash tree, preferably one in decline.  What are they?

The boxes are traps for the Emerald Ash Borer, a nasty beetle that hitched a ride from China to the Midwest some years back.  This bug has been inexorably making its way east across North America.  It eats, and kills, ash trees at a good clip.  Since ash is a valuable lumber tree, critical wildlife habitat, and makes up the majority of forests in many regions….this is cause for concern. 

The traps are not designed to catch all of them.  Nor will they attract them from more than about a hundred feet away, so they Will Not lure them into an area that doesn’t have them.  They are merely there to allow the USDA, USFS, DEP, UCONN*, and others to track the bug’s progress so as to learn what slows it down and what doesn’t.  Last year there were about 950 traps in Connecticut, on a square kilometer grid system.  This year there are about 450, over more of the state but not in all areas.*  So far, the emerald ash borer hasn’t been found in the state…yet.

What does this have to do with Esperanza?  Well, we are an ideal location for the trap, so for the second year there is one in the hedgerow; may it remain just as empty as last year’s!

*and other alphabet agencies and universities

*Finding an ash tree in the middle of a city was apparently hard, it was also hard to convince the majority of private citizens to allow someone from the government on to their property, it was equally impossible to convince the government body in charge of nuclear power plants, dams, and other bits of infrastructure to allow another government body access…