Introducing the Ash Extinction Project
Eight billion ash trees will have the life sucked out of them in the next several years by the emerald ash borer, a stowaway from China that emerged in Michigan in 2002 with a winning lottery ticket. Ash is one of the half-dozen foundational tree species of our woodlands, the shade we escape to in summer, the linchpin of our region’s ecology. Perhaps this catastrophe would be more meaningful to us if it were unfolding in someplace more exotic.
We are asking you to sponsor the survival of an individual ash tree.
While it’s true that ash trees are not exactly lovable in a mammalian sense, they can be awesome. The Old Norse people believed that a very large ash tree, Yggdrasil, was the fulcrum of the cosmos. Ash are also very beautiful and important to people of diverse cultures in myriad ways, but they are passing from our environment with hardly a murmur. Here, we think, is an opportunity to make a small, but direct, gesture against the unraveling tide.