Maine spent decades trying to stop the spread of Japanese beetles. It failed.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 21, 2024

The state may be facing its biggest beetle population yet this summer, but for decades Maine fought them with uniformed inspectors, quarantines, now-banned chemicals and even other insects. It was a war with high economic stakes, fraud cases and airplane stowaways that took on moral dimensions for some at its forefront. The beetles first appeared in the BDN in a 1923 wire report titled “Plant pests that cost billions: Government loses more by predacious bugs and blights than by bootleggers.” Control options are limited even today — most people knock them into soapy water, or attempt to establish nematode populations — and Mainers have struggled to find solutions since the beginning. Maine is resigned to the presence of Japanese beetles, but the war goes on at home.