The Tennessee Department of Agriculture has added six counties to a quarantine of ash trees and ash tree products.
Putnam County in Middle Tennessee, and the state’s five most northeastern counties (Sullivan, Washington, Unicoi, Carter, Johnson), have all been added to a quarantine that prohibits the movement of firewood, ash nursery stock, ash timber, and other material.
Now, 27 Tennessee counties are under that quarantine.
The emerald ash borer appeared in Michigan about 20 years ago and has killed millions of ash trees since. The beetle was first detected in Tennessee in Knox County in 2010.
The state Department of Agriculture reports that ash accounts for about 3% of Tennessee’s trees. There are about five million urban ash trees at risk in Tennessee, plus about 261 million ash trees on public and private timberland.