FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) — The City of Fargo’s Forestry crews manage about 61,000 trees throughout the Fargo area. The crews work throughout the year pruning, planting, removing, and treating trees. And soon, over 700 additional trees will be planted.
“This is the first step, as far as identifying the site, making sure it’s still plantable, a good site for a new tree. This will probably take an ash, an elm, or some other variety that came out of here last year. And the stump was ground last fall and now you can see that it’s ready for something else to come into its place,” said Scott Liudahl, City Forester.
Liudahl says currently, crews have been pruning throughout the past several months. On certain trees, there will be green dots along with a tag marking the need for treatment. Treatments began when the emerald ash borer was discovered in Moorhead.
“We didn’t start treating until 2023 when it was first confirmed in Moorhead. The guidelines are once it is in 15 miles confirmation, that’s when you need to think about treating your trees. So we’ve been doing about 500 trees every year since 2023. But it starts with us identifying good candidates,” said Liudahl.
While no cases have been confirmed in the Fargo area, crews are working with neighborhoods to monitor the health of ash trees.
“We’re being proactive and that’s great. We want to pick on – not pick on those areas – but focus our efforts on where the biggest impact is going to be when emerald ash borer finally gets a foothold in Fargo. So trying to get more and more non species planted out there in the boulevard is our big goal,” said Liudahl.
In the last year, 700 trees were removed and 1,480 trees were planted.
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