PORTLAND, Maine — Experts predict the regular visit of the coniferous tree pest the spruce budworm won’t be as bad as its last infestation of Maine, but still they estimate hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake for the state’s forest industry.
The spruce budworm returns on regular cycles every 30 to 60 years. In 2013, forest management experts in Maine assembled a task force to develop a plan that includes a call to review state policies on the widescale application of aerial pesticides and clear-cutting to salvage dead and dying tree stands for the varmint’s next visit.
The task force issued its final report Wednesday, as traps in Maine’s northern forests have shown a growing number of spruce budworms and Quebec already is seeing substantial defoliation from the pest.
For many reasons — less susceptible forestland and younger trees among them — the report stated the outbreak is not expected to be as bad as in the 1970s and 1980s. But if it were and the state did nothing to mitigate it, the task force estimated it would take about $795 million out of the economy in a year of peak damage.
The report made estimates of economic losses for five different scenarios, depending on how the state is able to respond, benchmarked against the outbreak in 1970.
[tableau server=”public.tableau.com” workbook=”Sprucebudwormeconomicimpact” view=”Econdashboard?:showVizHome=no” tabs=”no” toolbar=”yes” revert=”” refresh=”” linktarget=”” width=”100%” height=”485px”][/tableau]
Those anticipated economic harms to direct and indirect wages, jobs and broader impacts would be centered in Aroostook, Penobscot, Piscataquis and Somerset counties.
For those areas, the report also profiled the total acreage that’s at risk for infestation and the extent of that risk, finding that Aroostook County has the biggest share of high-risk acreage.
[tableau server=”public.tableau.com” workbook=”Sprucebudwormeconomicimpact” view=”Forestatrisk?:showVizHome=no” tabs=”no” toolbar=”yes” revert=”” refresh=”” linktarget=”” width=”100%” height=”485px”][/tableau]
For the affected tree stands, the report makes three major recommendations: focusing near-term harvests of trees that are most hospitable to the pest, applying insecticide to 20 percent of those that aren’t ready to harvest and salvaging dead and dying trees.
Some regulatory changes or review might be required to make some of those measures possible, which the task force said comes with a political environment that is “relatively more challenging than during the last outbreak,” especially as regards insecticide spraying and clearcutting to salvage trees.
The report estimates adapting the harvest to the most susceptible trees would drop the economic damage of doing nothing by about one-third and adding insecticide use on 20 percent of susceptible trees would drop the damage by about two-thirds.
The report calls for upcoming harvests to focus on those tree stands in order of risk, starting with the most endangered by the spruce budworm.
In the case that the dead or dying trees can be salvaged, the report found any negative economic impact can be avoided, but the report notes there may be some challenges to making that happen, including a smaller workforce in the logging industry and quickly changing or disappearing markets for certain softwoods with major closures in the paper industry and a shift to more hardwood pulp.
Meanwhile, the report stated salvaged trees could be sold into what now is a larger market for biomass energy.
And lessons from the past outbreak and Quebec’s monitoring of the situation could provide insightful guidance.
“Although experience from previous outbreaks shows that forest management strategies are not a panacea to protecting the forest from a [spruce budworm] outbreak, developing proactive forest management strategies to reduce the area of high-risk stands before the outbreak begins is important to mitigating damage,” the report states.
Read the full report below. http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2761804-Full-report-spruce-budworm-task-force.html