Dutch Elm Disease pg.4
We can imagine the profound dismay of the citizens of Portland [Maine] and New Haven [Connecticut] as each “City of Elms” was transformed rapidly into a “City of Firewood,” necessitating almost phenomenal removal expenses. Some may recall marveling at the futility of the “cut and burn campaigns” which were initiated to halt the spread of an epidemic that was killing trees literally by the millions each year.
By 1970, Dutch elm disease had killed 77 million trees. The virulent American strain returned to Britain in a log shipment in the late 1960s. That nation has been fighting valiantly, establishing an “elm disease management area” in southeast England to save a large stand of 15,000 elms, some of them four centuries old.
The recommended forms of control today include a combination of removing infecting trees, killing root grafts, controlling bark beetles, injecting elms with preventative chemical fungicides, injecting sick elms with therapeutic fungicides, and — lastly — planting resistant elm clones or just planting another species altogether.
