Morden is heading into year two of their 10-year Ash Strategy, a plan to diminish the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB).

In Morden, EAB threatens 37 percent of public ash trees and thousands of private trees, Shawn Dias Parks and Urban Forestry Manager says.

To date, through monitoring efforts in conjunction with provincial and federal initiatives, EAB has not been detected in the city.

Dias says in year one, over 150 poor conditioned or structurally defective ash trees were removed, and new trees were planted to improve the diversification throughout the city.

"Our goal is to reduce the percentage of ash trees in our community. When we go to replace those removed trees, we'll plant a diversity, different genus which helps to protect us from future insect and disease problems. Rather than all of the trees being removed or need to be removed because of an insect or disease problem, we may have one in every seven trees."

Over the ten years, the aim is to reduce the ash population by 15 percent; kicking off that plan for 2019 is the removal of 150 ash trees located on boulevards, parks and green space.

The Ash Strategy is one of the first of its kind in the area, developed based on information from EAB infected regions, and has received much support from Morden leadership.

"We're fortunate to have had council support to move forward on this being that we currently don't have EAB in our community. From my understanding we're a good place to be proactive instead of reactive," Dias says.

He adds by getting ahead of the game they can adjust their strategy once EAB arrives, "the sooner we get ahead of it, the less we'll feel the impact when it does get here."

Tree Removal Notices were distributed to residents to inform them of the activities, and a 2019 Ash Removal Map shows the locations for removals throughout the City. Monitoring and detection efforts will continue with branch samples taken from removed trees, visual surveys, and green prism traps during the active adult flight season.

The map illustrates the distribution of ash tree removals for 2019.