WINNIPEG – City crews have been hard at work this winter, removing thousands of diseased elm trees.
Forestry crews found and marked 5,679 elm trees last summer when symptoms of Dutch elm disease is most visible.
Work began this winter to remove all of them, 80 per cent of which are on private property, free of charge, to control Dutch elm disease from spreading.
Elm trees get infected when the elm bark beetle spreads a fungus that stops the tree from conducting water, killing the tree.
“We’re looking for leaves that are drooping and wilting, they’re curling up, they’re turning yellow and eventually as that stem dies the leaves turn brown,” said Martha Barwinsky, Winnipeg’s city forester.
The worst hit are Winnipeg’s 140,000 native American elms, but Siberian and Japanese elms have also been hit.
River Heights is one of the neighbourhoods hit with the disease and on Friday crews were out there sawing down trees.
“We knew that the disease in this area is pretty bad and we were trying our best to keep that tree going but we weren’t successful,” said tree owner Tom Thorsteinson.
Removal of the diseased trees is mostly done with a wood chipper, but crews have also been burning the sawed down trees at harder to reach locations like river banks where heavy equipment can’t reach.
“We will always have Dutch elm disease, we’ll never be able to eradicate it,” said Barwinsky.
So far city crews have removed about 5,000 of the diseased trees this winter and have another 600 to go by the time the operation wraps up at the end of April.
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