WATERBORO, Maine — The state’s widespread fires of 1947 and a planned but failed housing development in the 1970s could not kill off the 3,000 acres of mostly pitch pine trees and brush here.
But a beetle half the size of a grain of rice, pushed north by a warming climate, is prompting foresters to take action to protect the Waterboro Pine Barrens, which span Newfield, Shapleigh and Waterboro. The pitch pines there are favorite eating and breeding grounds for the southern pine beetles, first found in York County in 2021.
The beetles can marshal into swarms that attack and tunnel through pitch pines, choking off nourishment and killing them within weeks. They already have killed thousands of acres of pine forest in the southern United States and on Long Island, New York. They have been spotted on Cape Cod in their move north but remain scarce in Maine, with no infestations reported yet.
Jon Bailey wants to keep it that way. Bailey, southern Maine preserves manager for The Nature Conservancy, which owns the Waterboro Pine Barrens, is spearheading the drive to protect the woodland preserve along with other forestry organizations. The barrens are one of the first places in Maine where a small number of the beetles appeared in 2021.
A cold snap can kill the beetles, as it likely did most of them in 2023. But with Maine’s comparatively mild winter this year, Bailey and his colleagues are hurriedly employing other ways to preempt potential damage should the beetles arrive in enough numbers this year to infest trees in Maine. They are using tree thinning and controlled burning techniques, aiming to keep the beetles from moving tree to tree in the Waterboro Pine Barrens.
The southern pine beetle favors pitch pines, but it also attacks red pines and jack pines. The three pines together make up about 1 percent of the forested area of Maine, the Maine Forest Service estimated.
Pitch pines grow in sandy and generally poor soil from coastal southern Maine to Acadia National Park, where they form the signature treeline many visitors remember after a park visit. The trees provide little income to the commercial forestry economy, but they hold important environmental and tourism value for the state.
“These trees are so unique,” Bailey said.
Bracing against a cold mid-March wind during a walk through the barrens, Bailey pointed to the trees’ unusually thick and shaggy bark, which makes them much more resilient to fire compared with thin-barked white pines.
Bailey bristles when local residents call the trees “trash pines.” An enthusiastic ambassador for the barrens, he has taken neighbors on tours to explain why the trees are unique and important to protect. He is even known to jump out of his truck to point out a special butterfly or bird to passers by.
“They kind of gained a new appreciation, and we’ve had them come around and say, ‘Oh, you are doing this management over here. Should I be doing it on my property?’” he said.
Maine has a rare community of the pitch pine trees, including their northernmost U.S. location in Acadia National Park. The pines are appreciated for their beauty and the plants and animals that live nearby, including vesper sparrows, whippoorwills, black racer snakes and blandings and painted turtles. Some invertebrates lay their eggs in the pitch pines and eat the scrub oak that grows nearby.
“Almost everything that is found here is unique to the system,” Bailey said.
Because the southern pine beetles do not move around easily, thinning and selectively burning sick or weak trees makes the remaining trees stronger and better able to survive an attack, he said. If trees are too close, which happens with natural growth over time, the beetles can more easily infest them, much like a virus can infect people crowded together. Stronger trees also have better cone and seed production because they do not have to compete with as many other trees close by for water and nutrients, Bailey said. He and his colleagues foster trees that are healthy and that have out-competed other ones, which grow less tall or wide in the shade and ultimately are weeded out.
“If those trees are closer together, the insect moves through the forest a lot faster and a lot more catastrophically,” he said. “We need to ramp up thinning and prescribed fire because the beetles are progressing northward because it’s getting warmer in the winter.”
The beetles already have swept through pitch pine ecosystems in New Jersey and on Long Island, New York, said Amanda Mahaffey, deputy director of the Forest Stewards Guild, a nonprofit based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that is collaborating with The Nature Conservancy. Mahaffrey said her organization is learning how people in those areas have dealt with the beetle outbreaks, including how to communicate the situation to the public and how to prepare for infestations.
“That’s what Jon Bailey has been trying to do here with proactive management to keep the forest healthy for when the beetles get more established here,” she said.
While the beetles are small, their effect on trees is visible. Infested trees turn yellow and red, and pitch bubbles ooze out of the bark. To mitigate damage, foresters can cut 400 feet around the infested area because the beetles cannot fly well. Healthy trees can better resist the insects, but it is better to try to prevent infection, Mahaffrey said.
The foresters have mapped out areas within the barrens so they can compare the history of burns in each area, the extent to which they destroyed the beetles, and whether the trees grow back and how well. Most of the trees currently in the barrens grew after the fire of 1947.
“We’re collecting that science and data to help drive our management with our partners,” Bailey said.
The Nature Conservancy and its colleagues also can learn from experiences fighting the southern pine beetle on Long Island, where the infestation started and has firmly taken hold.
“Unfortunately down there, we’re moving from managing the insect to restoration, trying to figure out what we’re going to do next because the beetle has just completely wiped out stands of trees,” said Jonathan Janelle, a forester with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Durham, New Hampshire, who collaborates with The Nature Conservancy. The research station covers all of New England and New York.
The insect has been found by the handfuls in limited areas in southern Maine so far, but it is not attacking trees actively yet, giving the foresters some time to prepare. Mahaffey thinks it is just a matter of time until the beetles infestations hit Maine, though she doesn’t know when it will happen.
“The more management that you get looking like this,” she said, motioning to a stand of thinned trees, “the better prepared you’re going to be.”
The pitch pine trees thinned by the foresters are not used for lumber products, but are sold for pulp and paper products, said
Stephen Bodkin, a consultant and licensed forester at Better Timber Inc. who supervises the barrens thinning project day to day and interacts with the local loggers. The tree tops are chipped and sent to a local biomass plant. He said Maine is lucky to have a logging industry and places to use the trees, with a ready market for the products that Long Island lacks.
Money from trees goes to pay the loggers and Botkin for their work, Bailey said. The little income that selling the trees makes goes back into restoring the roads in the preserve and creating firebreaks for prescribed burning.
The Nature Conservancy has been working in the barrens for several decades. It has become more active recently about preservation work as more threats, including climate change and related problems such as the beetle, threaten the Waterboro Pine Barrens. So far it has thinned more than one quarter of the barrens, and will need another two to three years to complete the work.
“If we don’t do management, we will lose this habitat and lose all the species that were unique to it,” Bailey said. “This to me is a glimmer of hope. We’re using science and experience from other folks to save a unique and rare place.”
To learn more about the southern pine beetle and how it attacks trees, visit this webinar by the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange, this article by the National Park Service or this description of the beetle by the Maine Forest Service.
Lori Valigra is an investigative environment reporter for the BDN’s Maine Focus team. She may be reached at [email protected]. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation and donations by BDN readers.
