To walk down a street in Midland, Mich., this summer is to witness a scene of mass carnage: row upon row of tree stumps with just a scattering of sawdust around them. This trail of destruction is the work not of tornadoes or of man but of a voracious beetle known as the emerald ash borer, first found in the U.S. in Detroit in 2002. The spreading infestation has killed some 60 million ash trees in 15 states stretching east to New York and south to Tennessee, and by the end of this year the death toll will likely surpass that…
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