Above image from www.bayeradvanced.com
There are various ways to protect your ash trees, either through commercially available pesticides or through baiting and trapping through the use of girdled trees and specially designed EAB traps.
Pesticide application to treat ash trees for a. planipennis
A. planipennis traps
The above trap is a design proposed by a collaboration of the USDA-APHIS and Tennessee State University. The traps proved to be most effective when painted purple and placed in fields. However, no difference could be discerned from the trap color (red, white, purple) when on the edge of a wooded lot and field, or in the midst of the wood lot itself. Within the wooded areas, the trap proved most effective when hung mid-way up the ash tree canopy. The trap panels were coated with Pestick insect trapping glue (Hummert International, Earth City, MO). These traps caught on average 7.5 EABs per trap and were checked weekly. However, it was found that traps on the edge of wooded areas caught on average 7.5 EABs per trap, while the traps in the middle of the wooded areas caught on average 0 EABs per trap. These traps can easily be made at home, and the attractant is commercially available. (Francese et al. 2008)
New A. planipennis parasitoid species
The study of the species within the genus Spathius has increased. This genus includes approximately 300 species. The majority of the species of Spathius are idiobiont ectoparasitoids of the xylophagous larvae of several Coleoptera families, including the Buprestidae family. Previously unknown, a new species of S. exarator exists in the Russian Far East and has the possibility of being effectively used in North America as it is able to live in significantly colder environments than previous Spathius species. In areas where S. exarator exists there has tended to be approximately 50 percent less EABs. This is because S. exarator parasitizes the third and fourth instars of A. planipennis. This research is very new and will need to be continued to provide a better understanding of biological controls for A. planipennis. (Belokobylskij et al. 2012)