March 29, 2024

Turning a negative into a positive

Green Valley State Park may have lost the battle against the emerald ash borer, but the carnage left behind offers park staff an opportunity to entertain and educate.

Chainsaw carving artist Gary Keenan will be at the park from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday to turn what remains of one ash tree into a work of art, and the public is invited to come and go as they please and watch him work, while learning a bit more about the devastation caused by the emerald ash borer beetle.

Keenan has been featured at the Iowa State Fair for many years and his work can be seen all across the country and in Europe.

Using mostly a chainsaw, Keenan carves anything from animals to flowers to totems to people out of the large stumps left behind after something like an emerald ash borer infestation.

“We’re going to have him carve a black bear,” said Park Ranger Alan Carr. “We’ve got a pretty good tree as you come into the campground that we had to cut down near the group site area and we’re going to have him carve a bear holding a welcome sign.”

The sign will be removable because High Lakes Outdoor Alliance, a group that functions as a sort of friends group that helps with projects in the park, commissioned the piece. It will be on display at the park throughout the summer, but when HLOA holds its annual fall fundraising event, the bear may be used to help raise funds that HLOA will put toward future projects in the park.

This will be the first time park staff have tried something like this and Carr said he thought it was a good way to turn a negative into a positive.

“We are losing our ash trees to emerald ash borer,” Carr said, “so we’re cutting the ash trees down because they’re dying. We thought, ‘Well, here’s a big tree stump that’s still solid, good wood. Maybe we can make something out of it as opposed to just cutting it down and turning it into firewood.’”

All the ash trees in the park have to come down, which will be a process that takes place over several years, Carr added, and if turn out is good it may become something that happens again. If not, the trees will become firewood that can be sold and used in the park.

“We don’t want you to get it in your firewood, load your firewood back up and take it home or accidentally get a piece of our firewood,” Carr said. “So all wood that comes in, whether you bring it in or buy it from us, burn it here or leave it here to be burned.”

While Keenan is working on his chainsaw carving, staff from the park will be on hand with visual evidence of the damage emerald ash borers cause to demonstrate why an infestation is so devastating.

“The event is kind of to bring some more attention to the emerald ash problem,” Carr said. “People of Creston are pretty familiar with it because it’s been in town longer than it’s been out here. They were infected with it before we were. We’ll have a group of people out here that will be from other places too, so that will be a chance to educate them as well as hopefully enjoy watching Gary carve his bear.”

The emerald ash borer beetle is a native of Asia that was accidentally introduced through international trade. It was first discovered on the eastern border of Iowa in 2010 and, since then, 57 counties including Union County have seen the devastating effects of these bugs, and as of 2014, it is against federal regulations to transport firewood from Iowa over state lines.

Once signs of infestation are present, the death of the ash tree is inevitable. Emerald ash borer larvae feed in a serpentine pattern under the bark of the tree in the living layer of cells, known as the cambium layer, destroying the trees ability to transport nutrients and water.

Infestation usually starts at the top of the tree and the first signs of infestation are a top down die back in which the upper canopy dies, followed by epicormic sprouting – new branches sprouting lower on the trunk below the damaged area – and saplings, called suckers, growing from the roots of the trees. An over abundance of woodpeckers may also indicate an infestation. Woodpeckers eat the larvae, but there simply aren’t enough to keep up with the beetle onslaught.

“Drive along the north end of the park, up the dirt road,” Carr said, “and you can look across the field, down toward the park, and you can see these dead patches of trees already. They’re all ash. That’s just happened in the last year or so.

“Our campground will look different. We have so many ash trees that when we get them all cleared out, it will be noticeably naked.”

Keenan will be working at the campground on group site 31-34. That site will be closed to allow for plenty of room for Keenan to work as well as space for people to mill around and watch.

“Here’s something we can use this log for,” Carr said, “and maybe generate some money to bring back into the park, because eventually we’re going to have to be planting more trees.”