Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: Come on!

There he is, there he is, there he is.

[ exclaims ] Get him out of there, buddy!

Good boy!

[ laughing ] WOMAN: Whoo, high five!

Yeah!

JAHN: Next, on Oregon Field Guide: MAN: All of those galleries are from the emerald ash borer.

This tiny green invasive beetle from Asia could wipe out Oregon's native ash trees.

WOMAN: That tree's going to be dead, that tree's going to be dead.

Is there any hope?

But first, the Oregon Country Fair is all about joy, freedom, and celebration.

But a lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure the fair lives up to its mission to be careful stewards of the land.

MAN: And the concept is to work around nature instead of making nature adapt to us.

[ crowd clamoring ] Happy fair!

[ rock band playing ] [ crowd cheering ] [ film clicking in projector ] GILFILLAN: Since 1969, the Oregon Country Fair has been part of the region's cultural landscape.

It's the creation of counterculture communities that rejected consumerism and war and turned their focus to peace and love.

MAN: Part of that whole ethos at that time was the "back to the land" movement, and as a result of that, they also stood up and said, "Well, we really ought to walk a good path."

Those intentions may sound airy-fairy, but really they're just fair-y.

And every July, they're celebrated on this site in the Southern Willamette Valley.

MAN: Land stewardship is absolutely a priority of the fair.

The concept of "leave no trace," recycling, and thinking about low impact on the land, I think that that ethos has become more mainstream now, where it was more of kind of a newer concept in the '70s.

And over generations now, those practices have been passed down.

The 500-acre site includes open fields, seasonal wetlands, and lots of trees.

The area that the fair is put on is a woodlands with ash trees and maples and oaks, surrounded by the Long Tom River.

The site changes with the seasons, and the folks who run the fair adjust right along with them.

The Long Tom will, typically, a couple times a year flood over the bank and where the fair happens will be underwater.

You can actually canoe through the site, and the concept is to work around nature instead of making nature adapt to us.

This "go with the flow" approach requires much of the fair's infrastructure to be disassembled on a yearly basis.

This booth right here, I think this is a great example of it.

When it floods, it's pretty much completely open and the waters can move through.

Opening the spaces up to the elements allows seeds to disperse and plants to regrow.

We try to have as little impact on the land as we can and let it recover quickly.

In the spring, booths are reconstructed in preparation for the fair.

Builders can find recycled materials at the fair's Wood World.

And any new wood needs to be untreated and chemical-free.

Booths that need specific repair get red tags.

ROGERS: The message says, "The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have."

In this case, the cheeky message refers to some broken beams that have been deemed unsafe.

So they're pointing out that no matter how hard you work, things break.

We try and be happy and friendly and apprise people of the problems without being dull.

We've found that strict authoritarianism gets you nowhere.

Ah, there we go.

It can be trippy around here.

[ Malaska laughs ] Whatever the issue, there's a crew of volunteers ready to deal with it... All right, let's do it!

...in a uniquely fair-like way.

[ classic rock music playing ] To look after the past, there's an archaeology crew.

To envision the future, there's a land-use management and planning committee.

And to handle more present-day issues... Now, that's something that we need to take care of.

...there's the VegManEC crew.

That's a safety hazard.

Glenn Gregorio is one of its coordinators.

The word "VegManEC" stands for Vegetation Management and Erosion Control, VegManEC.

Basically, the VegManECs prepare the site for the fair according to three measures.

Safety, shade, and stilts.

We're trying to clear stuff out of the way, and that goes with thorns, any number of things.

Shade: it gets hot out here.

The shade's very precious.

And stilts: we have 15-foot stilt walkers that need to walk the path.

Those practical considerations are rooted in a deeper philosophy.

We have a value system that we apply where we want to cut as little as possible.

We're going to need to lift this up out of the way and make this space useable again for the fair.

We're always balancing the fair that wants to expand without long-term damage.

This is rose.

My crew will probably figure out how to save that if we can.

That's a big wild rose plant.

Respect.

We're trying to live our values, so it's all these little tactics to the ultimate strategy of, above all, reverence for the land.

As the fair's three-day run begins in July...

Welcome to fair!

Thank you.

...the work shifts from managing the land to managing the 35,000 people who attend.

MAN: Lovely, lovely, lovely.

That's the way to do it, yeah?

WOMAN: Recycle or die.

[ chuckles ] Amy Hand is one of the leaders of the recycling crew.

[ cans and glass rattling ] We collect and process refundables, landfill, compost, and recyclables.

The crew of nearly 200 volunteers works in shifts.

In the morning, we separate everything by hand to make sure we use the landfill as little as possible.

Broken glass!

And the afternoon shift people are there to help you understand, like, that, yes, it does go in the compost... Yeah!

...and not the landfill barrel.

Hey, that cup is compostable.

I love rubbish!

This is made out of cornstarch.

You've got a green stripe: compostable.

Looks like a plastic cup.

Bamboozled!

You know, we live in a world of illusion.

This is compostable.

Don't put it over there.

It goes here.

HAND: All food booths are required to use compostable products and durable flatware.

And we fill two semi trailers with just the refundables alone.

In 2024, the fair generated about 23 tons of landfill but made almost 30 tons of compost, all hand-sorted and processed on site.

To coordinator Thom Barr, the result is worth its weight in gold.

It's all about the life that's in the soil.

Look how steaming rich that is.

This is the goal.

This is the payoff.

This is what makes this worthwhile, because this is the soil that will grow the future of the fair.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The work is hard and dirty, but no one seems to mind.

HAND: You know, we work and we play together, and it becomes this really beautiful dance.

There's trucks and trailers pulling in and out and people sorting things by hand and lots of laughter, and it's a ruckus.

Yeah, we might be a bunch of hippies hanging out in the forest... We're good?

...but our volunteers walk their talk in a lot of ways.

The ethos of the '60s and the people who created this event, you know, caring for the land was part of that.

If the world were really fair, you'd think that nature would smile on the kind hippies looking after it.

But the land where the fair takes place is about to meet a devastating challenge.

We've got this emerald ash borer problem.

70, 80 percent of this place is ash.

The emerald ash borer is an invasive beetle from Asia.

After wiping out entire ash forests in the eastern U.S., it was found in the Tualatin Valley in 2022.

With no hope of eradicating the deadly pest, we may lose almost every Oregon ash tree in the region.

People are saying up to ten years, and it's all going to be gone.

That's terribly frightening.

It's kind of doomsday-ish, but right now, we need to get trees planted because shade takes a long time to come back.

The fair is hoping to save some of the site's most iconic Oregon ash trees, but treating them with pesticides is expensive and not a sure bet.

MALASKA: We have some significant thinking to do of how that's going to impact the site, and then it's safety things.

You know, we'll have dead ash trees everywhere.

But, you know, the fair's been going for over 50 years, and it's not going to stop.

And so we just have to figure out how to face this next challenge.

♪ Love is something, If you give it away... ♪ Whatever happens, it's likely that the thousands of volunteers and generations of attendees will come at it with the same values that sparked the fair's creation.

♪ It's just like a magic penny ♪ GREGORIO: Basically, we're an intentional family.

And these stewardship crews are very much the fair trying to live its consciousness and its intention on the land.

And we practice it here so that we can bring it to the outside world.

And we're going to keep working through our issues because there is no other way.

♪ You'll end up having more ♪ [ ♪♪♪ ] This is my backyard.

And this time of year, it's not really much to look at.

But I do have these trees that, in the summertime, provide this wonderful canopy of shade.

These are Oregon ash trees, and unfortunately, they're doomed to die, along with all Oregon ash across the state, thanks to an invasive species that has arrived.

Cassandra Profita has the story, and it's a sad one.

But it does come with the smallest glimmer of hope.

[ chainsaw buzzing ] PROFITA: There's a tree killer on the loose in Oregon, and nobody knows how to stop it.

It's an invasive green beetle called the emerald ash borer.

It came to the Midwest from Asia in 2002, and it's been on a killing spree ever since.

MAN: It's been in the East Coast over 30 years.

And it's killed over 100 million ash trees.

Now it's killing ash trees in Oregon.

They're basically sitting ducks.

There is nothing that can stop emerald ash borer from coming through.

We can only slow it down.

This is an ash tree, and they're going to have compound leaves.

So this is a leaf, the whole thing is a leaf.

MAN: Ash is a beautiful tree.

Unfortunately, emerald ash borer will kill the vast majority of the ash in Oregon, and it's going to be a lot of work for everyone.

Is there any hope?

The answer to that is maybe.

Cyrene and Zane, can you guys find a stump here from those trees?

Yeah.

Oh, Dad, here's a stump!

Oh, yeah, very good.

Biologist Dominic Maze and his kids were the first ones to notice that Oregon's ash trees were in serious trouble.

ZANE: Here's one here too.

CYRENE: Here's one.

So I was just looking around, looking at these swales...

In the summer of 2022, Dominic was waiting at Joseph Gale Elementary School in Forest Grove to pick up his kids.

I noticed, within the parking lot, there was a stand of very poor-looking ash trees, all of them dying, and I thought, "Boy, that looks really bad."

And then just getting a real sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

He asked the kids to look around for a little green beetle, and they found one.

I was just going like this, and it landed in my hand.

PROFITA: How big was it?

It's like very tiny, about like that big.

CYRENE: No.

No, it's about that big.

No, it's about that big.

No, it's about-- DOMINIC: I think it's probably about halfway between those two estimates.

These were the first Oregon trees to be diagnosed as infested with emerald ash borer, and they were cut down.

And you come down here, you can actually see exit holes.

This tree was heavily infested.

And that was the start of what we knew was going to happen, emerald ash borer reaching Oregon.

A very depressing story that's about to play out in the Willamette Valley, and it is like a death sentence.

When you're an invasive species biologist, much of nature's ruined for you.

[ birds chirping ] You see along here the blackberry, the exotic hawthorns.

Once the ash canopy dies, we expect these type of species to just take off once that canopy's gone of Oregon ash over there.

This is a purple prism sticky trap.

It'll tell us if emerald ash borer is here or not.

The beetle hasn't made it to ash trees in the city of Portland yet, as far as we know.

But Dominic is on the lookout.

So these traps have a sticky outside, and I'll be sticking a lure, a chemical lure, on the inside.

He's most worried about the habitat along rivers and creeks, where native Oregon ash trees have a unique ability to provide shady streamside habitat.

When we lose that Oregon ash, we lose that shade, we lose that habitat, and that shade is critical for keeping water cool.

And who likes cool water?

All of our salmon species that pass through the city of Portland or rear their young here.

And there's really no other tree species that can fully replace it when it dies.

Only Oregon ash can grow in the wettest, muckiest organic soil systems in the Willamette Valley.

That's probably why so many Oregon rivers are lined with this native tree.

Other trees, like cottonwood and willow, can't thrive in the same conditions.

This habitat is irreplaceable.

The emerald ash borer represents a forest pest worst-case scenario right now: loss of this irreplaceable keystone species, and we're not going to see any native trees replace it.

In many settings, it's going to be bad.

In April of 2024, dozens of trees infested with emerald ash borer beetles were removed from Forest Grove.

And the wood was chipped up or burned to destroy the beetle larvae.

That was just one part of an elaborate strategy to slow the spread of this invasive beetle.

Here's another tactic.

On the outskirts of an infestation, state workers created trap trees by girdling them.

The dying tree sends out a distress signal that will attract any beetles nearby.

And that's it.

Later, the girdled trap trees are removed, and workers with the Oregon Department of Agriculture peel back the bark to see how many beetle larvae they can find.

I'm just kind of like going slow so-- Oh, there's a larva!

So this is how they're killing the trees.

As they're eating through and cutting off the flow of nutrients and water up the tree, all that area around the gallery is starting to die.

The larvae feed in galleries like this before they turn into beetles.

It'll overwinter in that pupal chamber, and then when spring comes around, it'll pupate into adult and chew its way out and take off.

In August of 2024, another beetle infestation was discovered near Woodburn in Marion County.

Max Ragozzino with the Oregon Department of Agriculture checks the trees for beetle damage.

Yep, D-shaped exit holes.

Oh!

Inside the tree bark, he finds the culprit.

See the shiny green?

That's the beetle's abdomen.

This beetle didn't make it out, but a lot of others did.

So, yeah, all of those galleries are from the emerald ash borer.

There's a lot over here.

Boom, boom, boom, boom... boom.

That is a telltale sign.

Each one of those indicates one beetle.

Unfortunately, I think this is the-- potentially the heaviest infestation of emerald ash borer in Oregon.

EAB has probably been here for many years.

If they're not dead, most of these trees are not long for this world.

Infested trees will often have splits in their bark and fresh branches growing out of the trunk... the last gasp from a dying tree.

Max is working on yet another strategy for slowing these beetles down.

It's called a bio-control.

These are the largest of our parasitoid wasps that we'll be releasing today.

These little wasps lay their eggs in the emerald ash borer larvae.

Their antennae can actually sense where the beetle larvae are chewing under the bark.

We're going to go for the trunk here.

Sometimes you've just got to encourage them a little to leave the cup.

The parasitoid wasps don't just live off their hosts like parasites-- they kill the beetle larvae by feeding on them.

A few stragglers.

But don't worry, they don't sting people.

In fact, they don't have stingers at all.

Nature will know what to do from here.

Here's another way to slow down the emerald ash borer.

Laura Trunk is injecting this tree with pesticides that will kill emerald ash borer beetle larvae for the next two or three years.

I'm going to pump a little simply to push that chemical through.

That will get uptake in right into the cambium layer of the tree.

It's one of 360 ash trees she's planning to treat to protect them from the invasion.

These are our extremely large, beautiful Oregon ash trees.

They are hundreds of years old.

If this is lost, we cannot duplicate this for a couple hundred years, so it's worth protecting and keeping on site.

As long as I'm here, they will get treated.

She's spent her whole career restoring the ash-dominated habitat at Jackson Bottom Wetlands in Hillsboro.

Now the site is home to thousands of ash trees facing near-certain death.

She can't treat them all with pesticides.

It's far too labor-intensive.

It can get very, uh, difficult to be able to treat all these trees.

Statewide, we can only hope to treat a relatively small number of trees.

It's very sad, what is coming.

I have spent the last 16 years restoring Jackson Bottom.

We've been removing invasive species for decades.

We have built wetlands, we have put in a massive amount of effort into bringing this place back.

And losing the trees is going to be very difficult and is basically-- we're going to have to start the restoration over.

The ash borer hasn't made it here yet, and her goal right now is to beat it to the punch.

She's opting to kill some of these ash trees before the beetles can do it with a crew of arborists.

So we've got 210, which we'll do tomorrow too.

TRUNK: You know, I work out here every day, so I look and I'm like, "That tree's going to be dead, that tree's going to be dead.

Okay, like, a lot of these trees are going to be dead."

As these trees fall, these trees will fall on the trails.

These trees will be hazardous for people.

She's making plans to remove, prune, or treat every ash tree on the property.

And she's planting new species to replace them.

So you can see, here's another one of our little oak trees here.

We've actually gone through and probably cut down about 200 ash trees this diameter, they were about 10 feet tall, all in preparation for replanting.

Some of the bigger ash trees will be toppled and left on the ground.

Others she'll leave as snags for birds to nest in.

MAN: Nice!

That is a habitat snag.

TRUNK: That is a habitat snag.

Yeah, it's ambitious, but this is the correct course of action.

Like, trying to use the trees for wildlife, starting to replant now before we lose all the trees.

This is not easy for us.

Especially not easy for me.

I've been here for over 16 years, I've watched this site grow and change and wildlife species basically skyrocket.

So to lose these trees, it's devastating.

But all this work will create a stronger, more diverse forest.

If a new pest comes in and attacks one more tree species, we'll have other species to be able to fill in.

Right now, we just have ash, so when we lose it, we'll have nothing.

Hopefully by the end of this, we'll have a more stable, self-sustaining forested habitat with a lot more species so we don't go through this again.

There's at least one small glimmer of hope for Oregon's ash trees.

They didn't evolve with emerald ash borer beetles from Asia, so they never developed any defenses against them.

But at the Dorena Genetic Resource Center, scientists Richard Sniezko and Glenn Howe are looking for any ash trees that have natural resistance to the beetle so they can survive this pest.

And then when these are planted out, we keep track of every tree.

You know, I've probably collected 10- or 15,000 seeds from individual trees.

They're collecting seeds and planting test plots.

And when the emerald ash borer moves into this area, this will be a test to see if there's resistance.

If there is some resistance... Maybe they'll find some survivors that have genetic defenses against the emerald ash borer so we don't have to say goodbye to Oregon ash forever.

Most of our ash currently on the landscape are doomed, but can we get ash back 20, 30, 40 years down the line?

I want to know, can I solve the problem and get the trees out there for future generations?

The Oregon Department of Forestry is tracking the spread of the beetle with hundreds of purple sticky traps.

MAN: All of these are cooperators that are putting traps up.

Oregonians can help by checking ash trees for signs of beetle damage.

Look to see if the top of the tree is not producing leaves like it should.

Then check the bark on the trunk for holes like this.

Emerald ash borer makes these characteristic D-shaped exit holes when it leaves the tree.

And so no other insect will do that in ash trees.

You can report infested ash trees on this website.

And to help slow the spread of the beetle... experts say be sure to buy your firewood where you plan to burn it.

Please don't move it more than 10 miles.

That's likely how the beetle got here in the first place.

[ ♪♪♪ ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

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