Budworms ravaged Maine’s forests for years. They’re starting to come back.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • November 18, 2024

A spruce budworm outbreak has plagued Maine’s northern borders for nearly two decades, with the tree-killing moths making sporadic incursions from Quebec but never reaching numbers that suggest a repeat of the outbreak that ravaged the state a half-century ago. This summer, though, state entomologist Michael Parisio’s heart sank as he surveyed the northwestern woods of Aroostook County by plane. A 3,000-acre hot spot of partially denuded spruce-fir forest suggested the once-a-generation outbreak everyone had feared might have begun. University of Maine modeling shows that more than 178,000 acres are on the verge of defoliation.