Injections could help fight Asian beetle in Ohio

COLUMBUS (AP) — The government is proposing to inject healthy trees with pesticides to help battle the tree-killing Asian longhorned beetle in southwest Ohio.

The beetle was discovered in a Clermont County area east of Cincinnati in June 2011.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that U.S. Department of Agriculture officials on Wednesday proposed pesticide injections for some healthy trees in areas near infested trees. The plan had been to destroy every tree as far as a half-mile from infested trees to starve the invasive bug.

So far, about 9,000 infested trees have been destroyed.

The injections are still a proposal, which is open to public comment until Feb. 16.

The beetles are believed to have arrived in cargo shipments from Asia. The first reported U.S. infestation was in 1996 in Brooklyn, N.Y