By Joe Rankin, Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Editors Note: This story was originally published in 2018. In 2021, researchers from the University of New Hampshire identified southern pine beetle for the first time in Maine. Sometimes the name of an organism carries weighty meaning. For instance, that of the southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis….
Photo courtesy of North Maine WoodsThere is the north Maine woods: the vast expanse of trees and mountains and ponds that makes up a significant portion of the Pine Tree State. Then there is North Maine Woods, the organization that manages recreation on 3.5 million acres of the state owned by a variety of landowners,…
Brett Mitchell has a vested interest in keeping tabs on the population of spruce budworm moths — he and his son own a 45-acre Christmas tree farm — 45,000 balsam fir trees — in St. Agatha at the northern tip of Maine. So, when he heard about a program looking for would-be citizen scientists to put…
