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Minneapolis sees spike in Dutch Elm Disease
One tree expert calls it a war zone: a block in Southwest Minneapolis where residents are losing 12 trees to Dutch elm disease. "This is a long block with a lot of elm trees, so that's pretty severe," Arborist Dana Hendrickson said. Hendrickson, who works for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, said the city has diagnosed about 1,000 infected elm trees so far this year. That's twice as many as this time last year, when only 500 trees had been diagnosed with Dutch elm disease. Hendrickson said that some of the sick elms that are showing up now, may have been sick last summer, but weren't showing any symptoms yet. "The signs and symptoms were masked by kind of a drought late last summer and into fall," Hendrickson said. Experts say it'll be another month or so before they know how high the numbers will spike this summer. "It's a little too early right now to see what the new infections are going to bring," Hendrickson said. Experts hope there won't be a repeat of the summer of 2004, when Minneapolis lost 10,000 trees to Dutch elm disease. Dutch elm is a fungal disease that is spread between elm trees by the elm bark beetle. There is no cure, but some fungicides can slow the spread of the disease. Cindy Dainsberg of S. James Avenue in Minneapolis is losing one elm on the boulevard in front of her house. With tears in her eyes, she took pictures of the tree before it was cut down. "I just went in the back of my yard and looked up and tried to block it out to see how it's going to look from the backyard," Dainsberg said. "There's gonna be a difference definitely."
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