The other day a friend and I were out fishing at one of my favorite spots (a beaver dam in the woods across the road from were my family has a yearly get-together). We were only there a few minutes when a fast and viscous storm blew in with sounds like a freight train. I looked at my friend and he said to me, “Here comes the tornado”. I chuckled a little but then realized there may be some truth to the statement. We both immediately started running for the road while the wind and rain made everything turn to a gray haze. As we ran down the trail the sound of the wind and rain gave way to the unmistakable crack and pop of falling trees and branches. Near the trails end I felt something brush the back of my neck. After a short while we were in the house where we waited out the storm and took quite a ribbing for going out in the first place. After things calmed down I went back to survey the damage and realized that what i felt skimming the back of my neck was actually the top of a twenty five foot ash tree. I walked the trail and noted that almost all the branches and trees that came down were ash. It was a really profound moment when I realized that for one we were really close to getting crushed and two, this is what extinction looks like.

When driving down the road one does not have to be an arborest to identify an ash tree in Michigan, especially in the summer. On occasion a person will happen upon a yard with one beautiful ash that is almost undoubtedly treated yearly with pesticide. If it is not treated it would likely fall victim to the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive spices brought from Asia sometime in 2002 that is wiping out ash trees at an alarming rate. This beautiful ash is one single standing giant in a sea of dead that were not preserved by the DNR or a scientist but a hobbyist, one individual preserving their own piece of the world.

As I look at a map of the spread of this insect I cant help but to think about Chytrid and how it just wipes out entire populations in its path. The reality is that one day, maybe even right this moment large populations of some of the worlds most beautiful amphibians will not be in the wild, the Zoo or even organizations like Amphibian ark but instead the caring hands of the common hobbyist possibly even holding in a small aquarium the last hope for a species that otherwise would be extinct.

To conclude I do not know if this would even be considered an article. This is just the observation of a simple woodworker/handyman/janitor/hobbyist and something I felt I had to say. So keep your lines clean your little friends happy and who knows maybe someday, when everything is said and done you may have the tree that saves the species in a little aquarium in your living room.
By: Kevin Fike


works cited: Emerald Ash Borer, Extinct Amphibians of the World