Warmer winters could push pine-tree killing beetles deeper into Maine

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 20, 2024

January’s record high average temperature throughout Maine foreshadows a threat from a new pest that could attack the iconic trees spanning Maine’s southern coast to the mountaintops of Acadia National Park. Found in 2021 by a University of New Hampshire researcher in York County, southern pine beetles — each about half the size of a grain of rice — can marshall into swarms that attack and tunnel through pitch pines.