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How to IdentitY and Manage Dutch Elm Disease Page 14 of16 personal injury or property damage. AnOther option in wild areas or natural stands, other than accepting losses from DED, is to eliminate all elms and manage for alternative species. However, it is often desirable to retain elms for biodiversity, aesthetic, economic, or other reasons. Deciding Which Management Practices to Use Different management strategies will be applicable depending on whether you are worldng with a community program or trying to protect individual trees. In a community program, the objective will be to protect a population of elms. Individual landowners, however, may have no control over what neighbors do with their elms but may want to protect or save their own trees. The amount of money an individual or community is able to spend will also vary. Where you have no control over the management of surrounding trees, the only options available are treatments to protect or save individual trees. Good sanitation practices and disruption of root grafts are necessary on individual properties, but these practices alone will not protect a tree from disease transmission by bark beetles from other properties. Preventive fungicide injection, eradicative pruning and fungicide injection, and insecticide treatment are generally the only options available for individual trees. In a community program, resources to spend on individual trees may be low, but there is more opportunity to manage populations of elms. Where there are continuous elms, root graft disruption is essential to halt the spread. Sanitation is key to reducing beetle and DED populations, and is effective. Community ordinances can be established to encourage prompt removal of diseased trees and prevent the storage of elm wood with bark intact. Education will help citizens understand the importance and benefits of working together to manage DED. As resources allow, preventive treatment, eradicative treatment and insecticides can be used to augment a program. If you are working with a community with a significant elm resource, become familiar with the literature listed below and with what has worked well in other communities. The impact of DED on our urban forests has been massive. Despite the losses, elms should and will continue to be a component of many urban forests. We have an opportunity to consider what trees will compose the future urban forest, and we can learn from the past. Landowners and communities can and should choose carefully what types of trees to plant and where to plant them. Bibliography . Allison, J. R., and G. F. Gregory. 1979. How to Save Dutch Elm Diseased Trees by Pruning. USDA FS publication NA-GR-9. . Ascerno, M. E., and R. P. Wawrzynski. 1993. Native Elm Bark Beetle Control. http://www.na.fs.fed.uslspfolpubslhowtoslht_dedlht_ded.htm 8/25/2004