Skip Maine state header navigation

Agencies | Online Services | Help

Skip First Level Navigation | Skip All Navigation

Home >PSB >State Successful in Relieving Restrictions on Pine Shipments

State Successful in Relieving Restrictions on Pine Shipments: Pine Shoot Beetle Quarantine Expanded

The common pine shoot beetle Tomicus piniperda (L.) (PSB) is a native of Europe and Asia.  The preferred host of this beetle is Scotch pine, but other pines are susceptible including Austrian, eastern white, red and jack.  Adult females lay their eggs between the inner bark and outer sapwood of cut stumps, logs or more rarely in trunks of severely weakened trees.  Larvae develop within the stems and emerge as adults.  These adults fly to the crowns of living, healthy trees and feed within the shoots.  Each adult can kill 1-6 shoots during this period of feeding (usually lateral shoots within the upper crown).  USDA APHIS considers this to be a potentially serious pest – particularly in the southern US.  For this reason PSB and its potential host materials are regulated.

PSB was first trapped in Maine (in Adamstown) in 2000, with additional adults recovered at 3 sites in Oxford and Franklin Counties between 2001 and 2003.  Despite continued trapping efforts, no PSB have been recovered in Maine since 2003.  Nonetheless, there has been a mandatory quarantine regulating the movement of PSB and pine material since 2001.  Regulated articles include entire plants or plant parts in the pine genus—including Christmas trees, nursery stock, branches, boughs and stumps, and logs and lumber with bark—and pine bark mulch, nuggets or wood chips with bark attached.  For local people who sell or purchase pine logs and other pine products the quarantine and its associated restriction have been a serious economic nuisance, threatening to restrict supply of raw material and markets for products.

The Maine Forest Service (MFS) has seen no indication that PSB is a significant pest, nor that it is intensifying or expanding its presence in Maine.  Therefore, it has been working to reduce the impact of the quarantine on landowners and companies who work with pine products.  This January, a milestone in MFS’s work with PSB regulation was reached. Although Maine counties outside of Oxford and Franklin are not currently infested, the quarantine was expanded to include all of Maine except Aroostook and Washington Counties.  This will help promote a year-round pine market for landowners and pine processing companies in the regions of the State with a substantial pine resource.  It also frees up the flow of pine products from regulated states to the west and south.  In summary with regards to the quarantine on PSB:

  • Pine harvested in Oxford and Franklin Counties can now be sold to any buyer in the rest of the state except Washington and Aroostook Counties.  In past years pine traveling out of Franklin and Oxford needed to go to facilities with compliance agreements.  Except for Washington and Aroostook Counties, receivers will not need compliance agreements.  
  • Pine Harvested in Washington or Aroostook County can be moved freely.
  • Pine Harvested in a newly regulated area can move to other regulated areas without restriction.  Products destined for Washington or Aroostook Counties or other unregulated areas will need to go to facilities with compliance agreements.

Note that movement of material, including pine, from some regions is restricted by the Gypsy Moth Quarantine (for more information, visit Maine’s forestry related quarantines website: http://www.maine.gov/doc/mfs/idmquar.htm).

Anyone with questions about compliance agreements or where they can ship material should contact Allison Kanoti, Maine Forest Service, 50 Hospital Street, Augusta, ME 04330; (207) 287-3147.

1/29/2007