Despite one of the most brutal winters in years-more than 90 percent of the surface of the Great Lakes froze solid-the cold was not enough to kill that destroyer-of-trees, that emerald ash borer.
"We didn't find a single dead larva," a professor of entomology and forestry at Michigan State told the New York Times.
The invasive Asian beetle is most damaging in its larval stage. The larvae burrow deep into tree trunks to protect themselves from the cold and, in doing so, fatally sever the tree's nutrient and water highways.
The larvae have killed hosts from Minnesota to New York since the species was first discovered in North America in 2002. But researchers soon realized the insects had been here for decades, and their spread would be hard to quell.
Optimism, the Times said, is fading.
"Ninety-nine percent of the ashes in North American are probably going to die," a U.S. Forest Service entomologist told the Times.
With an estimated 8 billion ash trees on the continent, the near-extinction of the species could have big consequences for North American ecosystems.
