Should I remove or save my ash (green and white ash)?
Ash (Green and White Ash) is on the hazard list here, which shifts the odds toward removal. Emerald ash borer has been confirmed in all 92 Indiana counties since 2017, so the question on a central Indiana ash is almost never whether to save it — the untreated ones are already dead or dying and only trees on an active systemic treatment program are still viable. What a quote on an ash really prices is access: whether it comes down as a climbable tree or a bucket-and-crane job.
How to tell which one you've got
EAB decline runs top-down: thinning starts in the upper third of the canopy, then epicormic sprouts erupt from the trunk and lower limbs as the tree tries to re-leaf below the damaged tissue. The tell that separates ordinary stress from EAB is woodpecker blonding — pale, flecked patches where birds stripped outer bark chasing larvae — plus 1/8-inch D-shaped exit holes and S-shaped galleries under the bark, none of which drought produces.
The structural question
A living ash is respectable wood; a dead one is a different tree entirely. Once EAB kills it, ash goes brittle fast and sheds limbs in light wind or on a still day, which is why it fails differently from everything else on this list — it does not bend and split under ice, it snaps and drops with no load event at all.
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