Recalled climbing rope: check your Courant ends

The week's news hit close to the harness. The CPSC pulled about 1,050 Courant climbing ropes because the spliced ends can let go, and three tree workers died in separate incidents from Virginia to Oregon to Texas. Emerald ash borer also turned up in Colorado Springs for the first time, and Oregon's quarantine grew again.

The big one

The Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled roughly 1,050 Courant Spliced Kalimba climbing ropes because the spliced termination ends can fail without warning (CPSC). The failure mode is exactly the one you don't want at height: a splice that comes apart under load, with a fall hazard the agency ties to serious injury or death.

The recall covers the 45-meter, 50-meter and 60-meter ropes in the lollipop and bubblegum colorways. These are sold for tree climbing and pruning, so if you or anyone on your crew bought Courant Kalimba line with factory-spliced eyes, pull it out of the rotation now and check the length and color against the notice.

A spliced eye is supposed to be the strongest, cleanest termination you can buy. When the manufacturer says the splice itself can fail, there's no inspection trick that makes it safe to keep climbing on. Take it out of service.

The canopy

SiteOne's nursery arm buys again

SiteOne Landscape Supply said its Devil Mountain Wholesale Nursery subsidiary acquired Patterson Nursery Sales on August 3 (Business Wire). It's SiteOne's third acquisition of 2026 and Devil Mountain's first this year, aimed at serving nursery customers nationally. The consolidation on the supply side keeps rolling.

A new foot ascender from Harken

Among the fresh gear listings this week is the Harken Ninja Foot Ascender, pitched as a lighter redesign for arborists, rope-access techs and rescue climbers (Notch Equipment). Also floating around the vendor pages: the Notch Jet Step II and the Rope Runner Vertec Revolution.

ISA hands out scholarships

ISA announced its 2026 Business Academy scholarships on August 6 and 31 student scholarships the day before (ISA). If you've got a climber worth developing on the business side, the Business Academy track is the one to watch for next cycle.

Safety report

An arborist died the morning of August 4 in northwest Portland when a tree uprooted and fell on them on the 5200 block of Northwest Cornell Road near Forest Park (KOIN). Portland Fire & Rescue said the tree that fell was unrelated to the crew's own work. The worker was pronounced dead at the scene, and technical rescue teams used a rope system to recover the body from the steep terrain.

In Henrico County, Virginia, a worker was electrocuted while working in a tree near a home on Darbytown Court the morning of August 5 (WTVR). Crews were called around 8:10 a.m. The worker had already been pulled from the tree by the time first responders arrived and was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

A 45-year-old tree service worker died the morning of August 6 in the 13500 block of Cahill Drive in northwest Harris County, Texas (ABC13). Deputies first said the man was shocked while cutting down a tree and that a branch may have hit a power line. By that afternoon, Precinct 4 said the death came from a medical emergency, with the investigation still open.

Pest and disease watch

Emerald ash borer showed up in Colorado Springs for the first time, confirmed August 5 and 6 by city officials and the Colorado State Forest Service (Colorado Politics). Local reporting put the city's ash at about 20% of its canopy, with tens of thousands of trees at risk over the next 10 to 15 years. CSU also confirmed the beetle in Parker, pushing the front south along the Front Range.

Oregon's Willamette Valley quarantine grew too. Forestry officials confirmed EAB in Salem, Beaverton, Bethany Lake Park, the Oregon Garden in Silverton and along the Banks-Vernonia State Trail, from spring trap catches analyzed in July (KPTV). That's five counties now: Clackamas, Marion, Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill, all under a firewood and ash-material movement quarantine.

Long Island added a new one to the list. New York's DEC named Huntington, Babylon, Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven as a Laurel Wilt Quarantine District, and arborists are asking residents to watch for the fungal disease that kills trees in the laurel family (WABC-TV).

Wisconsin's DNR is telling landowners to look hard at oaks knocked around by recent storms (TCH Daily News). Fresh wounds on red oaks are an open door for oak wilt, and early canopy dieback is the sign to call a forest health specialist fast. Recent lab work also confirmed bur oak blight in Calumet County.

Species spotlight

Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) is the tree that colonizes every abandoned pasture and fencerow across eastern and central North America. It's a juniper, not a true cedar, and it will grow on dry rocky alkaline dirt that would kill most other conifers. Hardy from zone 2 to 9, drought tolerant, moderate growth to 30 to 50 feet.

The wood is aromatic, fine-grained and decay-resistant at about 0.44 specific gravity, which is why it ends up as fence posts, closet lining and pencils. On a rig it's dense and twiggy rather than a timber-rigging species. Two things to know before you plant one: bagworms find it, and it's the alternate host for cedar-apple rust, so keep it away from apples and crabapples. Prune late winter to early spring.

One for the lunch break

Louisiana has a new state champion, and it's a tree that numbs your mouth. Landowner Paula Vizinat realized the Hercules club on her family's Union Parish property, better known as the toothache tree (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis), was big enough to make the Champion Tree list (Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry). Chew the bark or a leaf and it numbs the mouth, the old folk remedy for a bad tooth. State officials say it's the kind of thing owners stumble onto in their own woods without knowing what they've got.

Stay safe out there,

The TreeNerd crew

On the board

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• Climbing Arborist · Klätterapan AB · Täby, Stockholm, Sweden · Based on experience

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