( extent of the infestation. The infected...)Emerald Spectre haunts Ontario's ash forests

"It's not just an Ontario or Canadian problem. Even if we're able to contain it here, it could come across at Sarnia or at Sault Ste. Marie. It's a case where we need, and are getting, international cooperation," says MacIsaac, noting that the American and Canadian governments are making extraordinary efforts together.

The 2005 federal Canadian budget contained the first line item ever to target invasive species directly ?$85 million, much of which is earmarked for battling the borer and another forest pest, the Asian longhorn beetle, which has infected hardwood trees in areas around Toronto, New York and Chicago.

If containment isn't effective, MacIsaac knows well what the future will look like. He arrived at his Windsor-area home one day in the summer of 2003 to see a neighbour cutting down 25 ash trees, among the borer's first victims. In Michigan's Wayne County, the first area infected, 60 per cent of the ash trees are already dead.

"In my opinion, the prognosis does not look good in the Great Lakes region," says Dr. MacIsaac. "If containment doesn't work, we are going to see a repeat of Dutch elm disease, which wiped-out a dominant forest tree species from eastern North America."

Dr. MacIsaac's paper on the beetle will be published in a forthcoming issue of Diversity and Distributions.