Minnesota officials are entering their fourth year of battling Emerald Ash Borer in a desperate attempt to save the state's nearly 1 billion ash trees. The Pioneer Press reports on some not-so-traditional methods employed by the department of agriculture to stop the exotic beetle. One interesting method involves gluing several dead Emerald Ash Borers to a leaf and leaving them by the Mississipi River in hopes that a male will come by to mate and get stuck.

MPR reports the Department of Agriculture will start hanging about 6,500 purple traps next week throughout the state. The beetle has already killed and infested millions of ash trees across the country, including several hundred in the Twin Cities metro.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture says they found fewer infested trees than expected in Minnesota's initial infestation area. Scientists conducting the branch sampling study also noticed fewer green beetles in the affected trees.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture hopes a sticky new tool will help in its fight against the emerald ash borer. STUC (Sticky Traps Using Cadavers) is designed to lure male ash borer beetles into a sticky trap as they look for a mate.

The city is warning residents to be on alert for companies going door-to-door that claim they have products that will stop or prevent emerald ash borer infestations.

Minnesota made it through most of the summer without a new infestation of the emerald ash borer. But that's ended now that the pest has turned up in trees at the Fort Snelling Golf Club. The Agriculture Department will check nearby Dakota County to see if it should be added to the list of four counties where firewood is quarantined because of the bug.

Agriculture officials hope the insects -- a natural enemy of the ash borer -- will help combat a newly discovered infestation of the pest near the city's historic Summit Avenue.