I have lost over a dozen white ash trees to the emerald ash borer.   What is a good replacement tree?  Central Wisconsin is the area.  
These were nice trees 2ft at the base 40" tall.   Damn bugs.

Thanks China!

They're close to me but not here yet.

Hackberry

I hate bugs that kill trees!
Poplar trees grow fast but don't live too long.

Depends on the application.

If ornamental, I'm sure people will be along with suggestions.

If in the woods, I've heard you can cut down a living ash tree and it will send up suckers from the stump, and the suckers are too small for the beatles to kill (they need mature bark). So the tree will still be alive, and possibly around long enough for the beetle population to crash (due to no mature ash trees). Not sure if this is true or not, but if I had living ash trees, I'd try it. There are doomed anyway.

I dropped a forty footer last year and that stump is sending up some suckers.

Oh HELL no!!

They grow fast and fall down fast.
They smell like shit when used for firewood.


White Oak.
Walnut.
Maple.

That's interesting, I wondered if that might be the case, that the bugs only killed mature trees.

We lost all mature ash trees a few years ago, but I have seen young trees that have leaves that look like ash that seem unaffected.

I would replace them with something productive that you value.

ie: Oaks for acorn production, Hickory/Walnut for human edible nuts, fruit trees, Maple, etc.

I sat in on an arboriculture webinar last week hosted by a university tree guru Dr. from out east (Carolina's I think).  She said that although it was not common to find EAB's in small saplings, they had.  So generally, you may be right, but I don't think I would rely on that hope.  Last winter I cut a couple of dead ash trees, it became evident over the last few weeks that I will be cutting dozens of them on my 25 acres of timber this winter.

OP, you might get better suggestions if you describe your AO, property size/layout, soil conditions, etc. to get educated answers.  My general answer is a diverse selection of natives that grow well in your conditions.

I live in SEPA and we are having 8 ash trees taken out this year, due to the Ash Borer. The sad thing is that we have several older tulip poplars, which get huge, but are fairly brittle and dirty trees, and little other variety. So now we have almost no variation in trees on our property. We will plant maples and others, along with flowering/ ornamental trees, but we also have a huge issue with lantern flies, so who knows what's going to happen. If its not these god damn imported bugs, its the damn Japanese stilt grass choking out plant life.

Others are likely more knowledgeable about trees, but our plan is maple, elm, magnolia and dogwoods to start. Since the poplar trees vertical and high, we are looking for intermediate trees that flower or create a nice canopy. Others have mentioned nut/ acorn trees, but you have to consider proximity to house/ vehicles and what youd want to clean up. I like walnut as a wood, but those nut pods can do some damage to vehicles, can stain things if left sitting and get wet, and they dont always play well with other plant life. I like oak as well, but walking barefoot in your yard and stepping on acorns isn't so pleasant.

Our popular trees are at the end of their life so those have been coming down one a year.   The ash trees are along a stream so I may put some maples in.   I have tried some swamp oak but they did not make past 3 yrs.   My neighbor is thinking about putting in some red oak.

Emerald Ash Borer hit Texas a little over 2 years ago and one of our state extension entomologists has given a few presentations on it. His take is we can slow it down with systemic neonics, but people lose their minds every time they hear the word "neonic" or "Roundup".
And you're simply slowing it down by treating the trees that someone cares about either on their property or in an urban setting. You simply couldn't practically treat every ash tree in your county let alone your whole state. And to do it right, how many days does one treatment buy you? 28 days? 90 days? You'll need to make repeated treatments.

There are some ash trees in Texas, but not huge numbers. They thought it would slow down, but it jumped from like from the Texas/Arkansas/Louisiana  border to Fort Worth in a few months. They don't know if it was transported in wood or commercially grown trees or if the bugs just naturally migrated that quickly. The fear here is that some insect will make an evolutionary jump to something like pecan trees or red oak trees.

Ban him!!!

How are American Chestnut for yard trees?  I think they have some strains that are resistant to the Chinese fungus that nearly wiped them out.

I sure hope so I am planting one next week. bare root stock I ordered on line.

I have 2 butternut tree in my yard.   I just noticed that one has a large branch that is falling off the side at a crouch.   Sadly both have the black fungus and will need to come down on the next couple of years.

Doesn't dutch elm disease hurt the Siberian elm?

I've sat in on a few meetings in Texas about the diseases we're facing, Rose Rosette and Citrus Greening. I just don't see any break throughs coming on either disease that's spread by insects. I'm friends with the director at the state pathology lab, he tells me their focus on rose rosette is on finding resistant species/varieties and basically starting over from scratch. Destroy every infected plant and start over with known clean material. They "think" it's spread by a tiny mite, and they've done some study on spraying to try to protect roses, but as far as I know there's no big program out there trying to come up with a super pesticide or genetic vulnerability we can exploit on these insects. If your plant is infected, they want you to rip it out of the ground and either bag it and throw it away or burn it.

I dunno if that comes from sort of Darwin-en theory, or if it's a matter of funding or public push back on creating new chemicals. It's kind of like letting nature run it's course.

Same thing about citrus greening, they've started a treatment program with systemic pesticides, but their main focus for control is still quarantine. Just keep it from spreading. Some tiny ass citrus pyslid is blowing around in the wind, grabbing a bite here and there, infected every tree with a chink in it's armor.

If you applied the same theory to corona virus, we wouldn't have vaccines, we'd just be wearing masks and social distancing for the foreseeable future and if you died, well it was nice knowing you. Instead we're actively trying to cure it or at least make the population immune to it.

I don't necessarily agree with their methods, but can you imagine going before congress and asking for a billion dollars for a eriophyid mite study, building up all that staff and infrastructure, that may never produce a result?

And let's say they do come up with a chemical that kills every eriophyid mite or lantern fly or whatever on the face of the earth, things are so politicized with Karens, they might never be allowed to use it, and we're back to where we were, just a billion dollars lighter.  

I'm sorry. I don't like what I'm seeing as far as dealing with pests in production agriculture in our future and it's worrisome. There's no magic pixie dust that makes everyone happy.  Maybe it's coming but more than likely, we're just waiting for the next crisis so we can hurriedly and sloppily react.

We have lost about 20 green ash. I have replaced with Honey locust hybrids (no thorns) .
An emerald maple, several sugar maples.
Transplanted 2 burr oaks
Have two almond trees that are zone 5 tolerant but they aren't too happy.
When we built I planted several silver maples for quick shade. Glad I have them or the house would have no shade.

Bur Oak makes a nice tree, give it room.

I've been treating a decent-size one I don't want to lose with this:




So far so good.

That's because they are an invasive species.

why wouldn't you just share that info in the thread?

Please do share.

Here in Northern Virginia, the vast majority of the ash trees died years ago.  There are hundreds of thousands of standing, dead ashes everywhere you go.  I do see seedlings, though, and the occasional small live tree.

The last time I typed someone a long response via IM, the ARFIM'er ate mine as well.  That was pretty frustrating, bein's that it was kinda an important message that I spent an hour putting together.

I see lots of seedlings, honestly.  I saw a bunch near Lake Accotink a few weeks back, and I have a mature, but not very large tree on my property in Loudoun and of course seedlings.

I’m hopeful too that ashes can evolve resistance. They seem vigorous enough. I don’t look forward to an Ailanthus/buckthorn/autumn olive/callery pear ecosystem, choked with oriental bittersweet and stiltgrass. I’m depressing myself.

Welcome to Ohio 10 years ago.  I spent nearly $6K on tree service to just drop my "vertical firewood" that was close to the house and I did the rest...cut down ones not close to house, cut up, split and stacked.  and there are still some laying over my hill that I'm not going to bother with.

Ah, that's what happened.  Sorry the browser ate your reply.

Kitties, I think a lot of people are interested in your perspective.  I don't think it's even close to a hijack.

@Kitties-with-Sigs for the lowdown on saving my few remaining Ash trees  

If you are working on a long post, maybe do it in 'Word' or your writing program of choice so you can save it.  Copy and paste text when you're done.

I'm in east central WI.
Personally I'd plant White Oak (but it has to be protected from the 4 legged locusts)
Norther Red Oak
Black Cherry
Walnut

There are others depending upon soil, moisture and light.

Sugar Maple
Beech
Shagbark Hickory

Look into the state tree sales and your county has tree sales also.

Personally I'd stay away from Pines and Spruces, low value and poor wildlife trees.

Just paid to have a 30 foot ash tree taken down last week.  Still looking for a replacement.

Last Saturday I snuck out of the house in the morning to squirrel hunt and flag dead ash trees.  I didn't keep an exact count, but I'm sure that I've got 15 to cut, just on the edge of fields and roads.  I would guess that I saw twice that further back in the timber that I didn't bother flagging.  I think I probably said it in an earlier post, but if I have any ash trees still alive, they would be a very small minority.