BISMARCK — Emerald ash borer has been confirmed for the first time in North Dakota in LaMoure County, according to the North Dakota Department of Agriculture.

NDDA said in a news release issued Thursday that adult emerald ash borers (EAB) were collected this week from a trap placed in LaMoure County, 9 miles north of Edgeley, North Dakota. Upon follow-up from NDDA staff, additional larvae were collected and officially confirmed as EAB. North Dakota is the 37th state to detect EAB, the NDDA said.

“The North Dakota Department of Agriculture and our partners have been preparing for emerald ash borer’s eventual arrival for many years,” Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said. “We have been placing and monitoring traps each summer and promoting awareness through outreach events, training and communication with the public. Now that it is unfortunately here, we urge North Dakota residents and travelers to be proactive to keep EAB from spreading.”

EAB is a wood boring insect originally from Asia, first found in the U.S. in 2002. It has since spread to 37 states and killed hundreds of millions of ash trees.

“North Dakota has more than 90 million ash trees that are at risk in native, rural and urban forests,” State Forester Tom Claeys said. “Ash trees make up between 20% to 80% of the trees along city streets and parks. Unless treated, infested ash trees can be killed in a few years.”

NDDA maintains a quarantine restricting movement of regulated commodities from infested areas. The quarantine will be extended to LaMoure County. Travelers should leave firewood at home and purchase or gather from local sources. Moving regulated materials from a quarantined to a non-quarantined area can result in civil penalties of up to $5,000.

NDDA will collaborate with the North Dakota Forest Service and North Dakota State University Extension to determine the extent of the infestation, continue monitoring ash trees and conduct outreach in the coming months. The ice storm that the area endured in December of 2023 will complicate efforts to find infested trees due to tree damage sustained in the storm.

Residents should check their ash trees for signs of an infestation, which include dieback S-shaped tunnels, also known as serpentine galleries, under the bark, small D-shaped exit holes and woodpecker activity in the upper canopy of the trees.

One option to protect high-value trees are insecticide treatments. Treatments are not recommended until EAB is detected within 15 miles. Residents who choose to treat their ash trees are urged to select a reputable tree service company with a certified applicator able to do these treatments. Most treatment options are restricted use and can only be done by a tree care professional.

For more information, or to report a tree you think may be infested, visit 

www.ndda.nd.gov/eab

.

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s

2024-25 PLOTS Guide

is now available online and features about 836,000 acres of land open to walk-in hunting through the Private Land Open to Sportsmen (PLOTS) program. In this week’s segment of “North Dakota Outdoors,” host Mike Anderson visits with Kevin Kading, the Game and Fish Department’s private lands coordinator, for an insight into what hunters can expect this year.

BISMARCK — North Dakota’s job opportunities are exponentially outpacing its population. With an unemployment rate under 3% — the third-lowest in the nation, according to the

Bureau of Labor Statistics

— the state is looking to legal immigrant workers to cushion industry demands.

Government and industry leaders gathered Wednesday during the first-ever Global Talent Summit to strategize ways to integrate international laborers into North Dakota’s workforce and social fabric.

Hosted by the Office of Legal Immigration (OLI), the all-day summit featured breakout sessions and keynote speakers including Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller and Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-ND.

“We have used immigration to solve our workforce challenges throughout the history of our great state,” Miller said in the opening remarks.

She went on to talk about the difficulties immigrants face working seasonal jobs through temporary visas.

“So many of these farm workers would love to stay in the state of North Dakota full time. They love our state and they would love to bring their families here. So why not?”

OLI was created within the state Department of Commerce in response to a 2023 bipartisan

bill

that aims to specifically aid businesses experiencing the statewide labor shortage. Its function is to organize efforts that recruit and retain immigrant labor while analyzing factors in North Dakota’s decreasing workforce.

That includes the May

2024 report

that the OLI produced in collaboration with consulting firms

Dalberg

and Labor Mobility Partnerships, who had representatives attending the summit.

“Correlation, as they say, doesn’t mean causation,” Joe Dougherty of Dalberg said.

He was pointing to a graph from the report that told the story of North Dakota’s economic growth over the past two decades.

“But you can see you’re hitting a ceiling and the binding constraint that’s forming that ceiling is the labor shortage.”

According to the report, North Dakota has the second-lowest unemployment rate in the nation at less than 3%. Meanwhile, the number of job openings increased by 50% between 2018 and 2023 — many of which were concentrated in rural areas of the state.

The state’s

online job service

lists over 13,000 jobs available, but Miller said that number is closer to over 30,000 considering the volume behind some of the individual jobs posted. Spokesperson Mike Nowatzki confirmed that number on behalf of the governor’s office after the summit.

Another major conclusion drawn from the report, and the driver of the summit, is that North Dakota needs to better market itself as a place to live and work. It revealed that immigration to North Dakota has slowed dramatically over the last century.

In 1915, nearly 80% of all state residents were immigrants or children of immigrants, whereas now, just 4.9% were born outside of the country, according to the report.

Armstrong provided the summit’s closing remarks, placing a heavy emphasis on the need to reform immigration policies. He said filling open jobs with foreign laborers would be much easier if there was more collaboration between both sides of the political aisle.

“Quit making the legal immigration system, as broken as it is, harder to interact with, because that is what’s happening,” Armstrong said. “It shouldn’t matter where they’re from, and it shouldn’t matter the color of their skin, shouldn’t matter what religion they practice, as long as they’re interested in being here and doing the work and contributing to the state and contributing to the community, and that’s what a rational, reasonable immigration policy should look like.”