Telltale signs of emerald ash borer infestation are visible where the bark of this brown ash tree has sloughed away. Drastic steps are underway to save the trees, which are at the heart of the Wabanaki basketmaking tradition. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Scientists and tribes are racing against time to protect a sacred tree at the heart of the Wabanaki basket-making tradition from an invasive beetle that is eating its way across Maine, pushing the tree species and maybe even the tradition to the edge of functional extinction.

“The situation for our cultural heritage and art form is dire indeed,” said Theresa Secord, a basketmaker from the Penobscot Nation and founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. “I am very concerned about my own dwindling ash supply.”

The Penobscot artist also worries about how she and other master basketmakers can pass this cultural tradition on to the next generation without reliable access to healthy brown ash, the pliant, sturdy wood that Wabanaki weavers have used for generations and one that features in the Penobscot creation story.

Tyler Everett, a forester and citizen of the Mi’kmaq Nation, weaves a basket from brown ash under the direction of Richard Silliboy, a master Mi’kmaq basket maker. As a Ph.D. student at University of Maine, Everett’s research has focused on the impacts of the emerald ash borer on Maine’s brown ash and Wabanaki basketmaking tradition. Contributed photo

The tribes and scientists studying the beetle have asked Maine landowners to search their forests for brown ash trees and their attacker, a beetle named the emerald ash borer. They want landowners to collect seed pods for replanting in a beetle-free future and give Wabanaki basketmakers access to their land to cut down basket-quality trees before they are lost.

Only one out of 50 brown ash trees – which grow along river banks and slopes, and thrive in bogs or floodplains – is basket-grade quality, so granting a basketmaker access wouldn’t make much impact on the surrounding forest, said John Daigle, professor in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources.

Wabanaki basketmakers want to harvest these basket-grade trees, freeze and store them – some as whole logs, some pounded into thin, ready-to-weave strips called splints – so they will have ash to teach basket-making to future generations of Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot children.

They join with scientists studying the spread of emerald ash borer, which reached Maine in 2018 and is now in nine out of 16 counties. And they are joining in calls for Mainers to abide by the state firewood laws prohibiting out-of-state firewood or taking wood in or out of in-state quarantine areas.

The Wabanaki are facing a heartbreaking future: Their children and grandchildren may grow up without wild brown ash, forced to use stored ash or some other wood while waiting for scientists to breed beetle-resistant brown ash trees. But every test seed planted needs 60 years to reach basket-ready size.

Like other invasive species, the emerald ash borer crisis may have been made worse by climate change, scientists say. Warmer winters may have extended the beetle’s range north into regions that previously were considered too cold for its survival, scientists say.

These half-inch, shimmering green beetles have killed tens of millions of ash trees since arriving in the Great Lakes area from China aboard shipping crates, most likely in the 1990s.

Telltale signs of emerald ash borer infestation are visible just beneath the bark of this brown ash tree. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

The female beetles lay eggs on the bark. When they hatch, the larvae burrow inside the tree and feed on the inner wood, leaving telltale s-shaped trails that interfere with the tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients. The larvae feast for up to two years before exiting as adults through a D-shaped hole.

Landowners often don’t know their tree is infested until its branches begin to die.

TRADITION THREATENED

Many Wabanaki feel grief about the widespread death of a tree that connects them to their families and their people and the place that they call Dawnland. And for about 200 basketmakers, it has provided an income that can help pay their bills or, for the most skilled among them, fetch six figures.

In Michigan, where the beetle has already wiped out most ash trees, some Anishinaabek basketmakers have even turned to weaving traditional baskets out of recycled vinyl window blinds, both as an artistic response to what the emerald ash borer has done to the tradition and because ash is now so hard to find.

Secord’s son, Caleb Hoffman, is a 33-year-old basketmaking apprentice. Hoffman would be 93 years old by the time an ash seed planted now grows to the size that it could be pounded for basket wood, she said. He’s unlikely to live long enough to see mature trees planted in a post-beetle environment.

“I worry the knowledge itself will be so far gone by the time the trees come back,” Secord said.

But scientists don’t yet know how to store basket-grade ash for more than 6 months, much less 60 years.

A basket-quality brown ash tree is one that is at least 25 years old, straight and free of knots, with at least eight growth rings that are wide enough to be split apart. The tree is cut into logs and carried out for pounding, or separation of the growth rings, by the blunt end of an ax or a mechanical pounder.

Jeremy Frey splits shavings of ash to use for baskets at his studio in Eddington. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Weavers use splitters and knives to pull the strips apart and thin their splints to size. Utilitarian baskets meant to carry potatoes or other supplies use wider splints. Fancy baskets intended for the tourist trade use thinner splints, especially for their decorative curls or bows. Some of the splints may be dyed.

“We made a lot of baskets,” said Richard Silliboy, basketmaker and tribal vice chairman of the Mi’kmaq Nation. He learned basketmaking from his mother. “Mother used to make 10 dozen a week, large potato baskets. The boys used to work on the farm and make baskets at night.”

When he was a boy, native families supplied baskets for Aroostook County’s 17,000 potato pickers.

“They could’ve never harvested that many potatoes without the help of the Native Americans,” he said. “Everybody said that it was hard work and it wasn’t worth it, but it was a time for all the natives to get together, like a family working vacation. We played a big role in what Aroostook County is today.”

Silliboy told his stories at a brown ash conference this month at the University of Maine. Organized by the Ash Protection Collaboration Across Wabanakik, or APCAW, sessions addressed the latest emerald ash borer science, the cultural value of brown ash, and efforts to preserve the basketmaking tradition.

But research on harvested brown ash preservation methods costs money that is hard to find, especially for a species with relatively little commercial value. While other forms of ash are used to make baseball bats, tool handles, and cabinets, brown ash is set apart by its cultural value to many indigenous peoples.

The Wabanaki value brown ash for more than its pliancy. It is part of their creation story: Gluskabe, a cultural hero with supernatural powers, fired an arrow into a brown ash tree and out of the tree came the Wabanaki people, singing and dancing.

While some research storage techniques to preserve wood for basketmakers, others focus on stopping the beetle, or at least slowing it.

Forester Oliver Markewicz inspects brown ash trees in Limerick for signs of emerald ash borer infestation. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

A NATURAL ENEMY

The Maine Forest Service has released thousands of tiny stingless wasps, or parasitoids, in 17 towns with beetle infestations, from Berwick to Madawaska. The wasps are imported from Asia and naturally prey on the emerald ash borer. They have established self-sustaining colonies in about a third of these sites.

This year, Maine took the first steps toward creating an ash refugium – pockets of trees inoculated with pesticides that can remain healthy enough to keep ash on the landscape and provide valuable seeds for the future. So far, 12 ash trees in Scarborough, Falmouth and Georgetown have been treated.

It’s too early to say if efforts to breed a beetle-tolerant tree will be successful, or how long that will take.

Meanwhile, the enemy is at the gates. Maine’s first beetle infestation was detected in 2018 in northern Aroostook County, coming from Canada. Infestations were found that fall in York County, and spread north quickly. It was reported in Bath last month, marking its first appearance in Sagadahoc County.

Scientists estimate about 40% of Maine’s ash trees are infested.

But they are not giving up hope. Not that they will be able to stop the emerald ash borer – Daigle, the UMaine professor, thinks that it’s too late for that to happen, and new research suggests the beetle never actually goes away. But there is hope that they will be able to breed beetle-tolerant trees that will learn to coexist with the invader.

“We’re going to see more dead and dying trees, there’s no doubt about it, but research is showing a light at the end of the tunnel, a future where we could keep ash as a component of our forest that wasn’t there 10 years ago,” Daigle said. “If we invest time and money in our ash, I think it will still be here.”