It's probably too late to stop an invasive beetle species from causing what could be called Toronto's ashpocalypse.

Councillor Norm Kelly's Scarborough-Agincourt ward has been hard-hit by the emerald ash borer. "There are roughly 160,000 ash trees in Toronto, split almost evenly between public and private property. We’re assuming they’re all gone ... within a decade,” Kelly says.

As chair of the Parks and Environment Committee, Kelly presided over a grim presentation on March 28 about the ash borer threat. After hearing a staff report, the committee recommended Toronto set aside $1.139 million to deal with the infestation, a proposal that will be debated by city council on April 12.

Even with this cash, however, the city still faces a potential tree disaster, Kelly warns.

“The Guildwood community in Scarborough ... down by the lake, 80 percent of its trees are ash. It’s going to look like a cyclone went through there,” he says.

Kelly compares the ash borer infestation to Dutch elm disease, a fungus spread by elm bark beetles that largely wiped out the beloved city tree across Ontario and the northern United States a few decades back.

Emerald ash borers hail from Asia and were probably brought to North America in poorly treated wooden packaging material, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The bright-green beetle has already killed millions of ash trees in southwestern Ontario, Michigan and surrounding states, the agency says.

The beetle was first noticed in the United States in the summer of 2002, spreading to Windsor, Ont., shortly thereafter. By 2007, it had reached Toronto. It is largely found in the northern and eastern parts of the city, where ash trees are abundant.

The adult beetles nibble on the ash leaves, but it's their offspring that cause the real damage. Their voracious larvae burrow and feed beneath the bark, disrupting the flow of water and nutrients throughout the tree, eventually killing it.

Once an ash tree is infested, there’s not much that can be done aside from cutting it down, although preventative measures are available. Injection of an insecticide called TreeAzin, made from a naturally occurring compound, provides some protection against the beetle. The treatment, which costs $300-$400 per tree, has to be repeated every two years.

Part of the $1.139 million requested by the Parks and Environment Committee will go toward injecting ashes on city property with TreeAzin, says councillor Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East). The fund will also pay for a survey of ash trees and removing infested trees on city property. To appease city hall penny-pinchers, the money will come from the existing budget for tree maintenance, among other sources, Ainslie says.

The committee also hopes to get Ottawa or Queen’s Park involved in the fight to save the city's ash trees, perhaps by subsidizing public educational material about the beetle.

“We need either to find a pot of money from our own resources or get the federal government engaged to pay for some advertising,” says Ainslie, who has been warning about the ash borer threat since last summer.

For all this, homeowners are still largely on their own when it comes to the emerald ash borer. The city urges people to contact a qualified arborist should they suspect the beetles' presence on private property, where the city lacks the authority to remove or treat trees.

Qualified arborists don’t come cheap, however. Anyone who hires a private firm to remove a tree from their yard is “looking at easily anywhere between $600-$700 ... A very large tree could well be $1,400 – 1,500 [to remove],” says Chris Timperon, an arborist with the Toronto-based Bruce Tree Expert Company.

Normally, there are additional fees. To remove a healthy tree with a diameter of 30 centimetres or greater at 1.4 metres off the ground on private property, homeowners must first obtain a permit costing up to $300 from the Parks, Forestry and Recreation department. The city has waived this requirement when it comes to infected ashes.

Government policy is partly to blame for the current crisis, critics say. Until recently, monoculture planting—concentrating one tree species in a given area for the sake of a uniform appearance—was the prevailing ethos in municipal forestry departments. As a result, large pockets of woods dominated by mature ashes can be found throughout the Toronto area—at least for now.

“If they had mixed it up a long time ago, there wouldn’t have been this problem,” Timperon says.