Some 250,000 acres of Maine fir trees are at risk of defoliation from a moth that could cause millions of dollars of harm to the state’s economy if ignored, forestry experts said during a webinar Wednesday.
The spruce budworm is an emerging threat that has already been spotted in Aroostook County near the Canadian border earlier this year, already affecting some 3,500 acres of trees, according to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Forestry experts worry that the spruce budworm could spread quickly and damage up to 250,000 acres of Maine’s forests next year. As part of a webinar sponsored by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, they recommended early intervention with aerial pesticide spraying starting in May.
“It may be in the northwest corner of Maine, but it’s an issue that is going to have an effect,” said Pat Strauch, executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council.
The council estimated that if nothing is done to kill the moth, about 40 percent of the spruce wood in the state, or some 1 million tons, could be destroyed. That could translate into a 10 percent cut in the typical $8.1 billion that forestry products contribute to Maine’s economy annually, and a loss of 3,854 direct and indirect forestry jobs.
It could cost about $15 million to apply the early pesticide treatments, said Alex Ingraham, president of Pingree Associates, which helps oversee 820,000 acres of forestland in Maine. The pesticide applications would cover 40,000 acres of small forestry operations and 210,000 acres owned by larger companies. He said that is a small price to pay compared with the huge economic damage of doing nothing. Forest owners would pay for the treatments, and he and others are seeking other funders.
“We need to ensure that we have the right tools in place and the right coordination to make sure that this does not become an economic disaster,” Ingraham said.
The moths are native to the state and have caused major damage during infestations recorded since the 1500s, said Patty Cormier, the Maine state forester. The last big outbreak across Maine and eastern Canada from 1967 to 1993 killed the equivalent of 25 million cords of wood, she said.
The threat of the infestation has in the past caused foresters to cut their trees before they are destroyed to recover their value, leading to a flood of wood into the market, Ingraham said.
The recommended spraying calls for using two insecticides that he said are approved by the state, tebufenozide and Btk, which would be sprayed from planes. Btk is a biological insecticide that needs to be applied twice, while tebufenozide is a synthetic version of Btk that needs one application, Ingraham said.
The moths need to be treated in early to mid June for the insecticides to be effective, said Allison Kanoti, the state entomologist.
The strategy to treat the moths early, while they are in the feeding phase of their development, came from New Brunswick’s example, Ingraham said. Neighboring Quebec has had an ongoing outbreak and has treated only about 10 percent of affected trees each year, and the infestation has grown to 33 million acres, he said. He wants to follow the New Brunswick lead of early pesticide treatments to stop the spread in Maine.
“The economic impact on the cost of doing this program versus the economic impact of doing nothing strongly weighs toward the early intervention strategy,” Ingraham said. “It keeps a healthy forest and it keeps a healthy economy.”
Reporter Lori Valigra may be reached at [email protected]. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation, and donations by BDN readers.
