About half of my wooded property WAS ash trees. Now I have a several year supply of firewood for the woodburner supplemental furnace in the basement. The borer has just about wiped out all the ash trees in Northern Illinoisy. I told the Will County Ag folks 10 years ago I thought I had a borer infestation, and they ignored me.
Trees have a lifespan, during which they are either harvested, destroyed, or succumb to old age, weather, and the various critters that kill trees.
Unfortunately, the bent is on 'preservation', not
management of the resource, and as long as that is the focus, the resource will suffer. Once again the effort to preserve dynamic systems in stasis is a failure.