Author: Leigh Greenwood

Firewood from Texas to New Mexico?

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Dear Don’t Move Firewood,

I am trying to bring oak firewood into New Mexico from Texas. Is there any legal way this is possible?

Yours, Law Abiding Texan

Dear Law Abiding Texan,

The answer to your question is straightforward. If you live in an Imported Fire Ant quarantined county (see map here) within the state of Texas, it is illegal to move firewood that has been stored outside on the ground into the state of New Mexico. Now, if you live in a non-quarantined county (this is some of the Western-most and Northern-most sections of Texas) it would be technically legal, but not a great idea. Moving firewood more than 50 miles is not suggested- the risk that you are moving a pest or pathogen to a new region becomes much greater with each passing mile.

So when would it be both legal and generally permissable to move firewood from Texas to New Mexico? If you lived on a western border county in Texas and were bringing it just to a nearby town in New Mexico. That’d be fine, as it would both be legal (not quarantined) and not too far (within roughly 50 miles).

Sincerely,

Don’t Move Firewood staff

For more information, we suggest:

 

Firewood for Home Heating Infographic made by Don’t Move Firewood

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Heating your home or cabin with wood is an inexpensive and efficient way to get through the cold months. Here at Don't Move Firewood, we support the use of firewood when properly sourced (locally harvested or heat treated!) and to help educate people on the topic of home heating with firewood, we've released our first in our new series of infographics: Firewood for Home Heating.

Download options: Full Resolution PDF | Low Resolution JPG for Web or Powerpoint

Looking for our Ohio specific versions? Ohio Infographic Information | Ohio Full Resolution PDF | Ohio Low Resolution JPG for Web or Powerpoint

 

We could not have made such an informative resource without the information from these excellent sources (listed by roughly three rows of content):

Top left to right:

Middle left to right:

  • The Nature Conservancy, 2010. A Survey of Pests, Pathogens, and the Public. For complete information on this survey, contact Leigh Greenwood at LGreenwood at TNC.org.

  • Diss-Torrance, A, Peterson, K, Robinson, C. 2015 Changing movement of firewood by campers: an eight year study of effect of regulation and education, in prep. Access a recent webinar covering this research on the Don't Move Firewood blog or email Andrea Diss-Torrance, Invasive Forest Insects Program Coordinator for the State of Wisconsin, for more information.

Bottom left to right:

Please note that this infographic was revised slightly in December 2015 to clarify the wording and intent of the moisture content information on the bottom right.

 

Do you love this graphic so much that you'd like to share a little piece of it on a social media account? Here are three pieces for you to choose from!

 

 

 

Emerald ash borer and firewood awareness in Boulder County, Colorado

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Guest blog by Brett Stadsvold, EAB Coordinator for Boulder County Parks & Open Space, Colorado

In the dry and sunny Colorado climate, ash trees provide welcomed shade in our cities and backyards -but now those trees and the shade they provided are threatened by emerald ash borer (EAB). The invasive insect, EAB was discovered in Boulder, Colorado in September 2013 and is now presumed to be located throughout the city.  Foresters that are familiar with EAB know that once it is found in an area there is little hope for ash trees surviving the wave of ash decline without intervention.

Boulder County advertisement on the Denver RTD buses stationed in the Boulder Terminal

Most cities and towns in Boulder County have taken action to manage public ash trees, but a high percentage of the ash tree population in the county is located on private property. One of the biggest advantages agencies can gain when managing EAB is more time. In an effort to increase the time Boulder County and its cities and towns have for EAB management, agency staff are proactively educating residents on ash tree identification, private EAB plan development, and proper firewood practices.

With grant assistance from the Western IPM Center, Boulder County was able hire one dedicated staff person to attend public events and provide free EAB education for county residents. The grant also provided funding for a campaign to target property owners via direct mailers, social media, and six weeks of bus advertisements urging residents to learn how to identify ash trees and create an EAB management plan for private ash trees.

"Buy it Where You Burn it" firewood sign encouraging residents to obtain and burn local wood

Boulder County is a tourist destination for camping and recreation enthusiasts with many modern campgrounds and abundant dispersed camping areas in the surrounding mountains. Firewood often accompanies campers destined for the mountains, and we are concerned that EAB could be dispersed further as campers move with firewood across the county. In 2016, Boulder County plans to print firewood signs and work with the United States Forest Service and firewood sellers to place signage encouraging firewood users to obtain and burn firewood locally. DontMoveFirewood.org produced the digital content that will be both printed on yard signs in the National Forest Campgrounds in Boulder County, and used for a related social media campaign.

Proactive public education and outreach in multiple formats is necessary to build the local knowledge base on EAB and proper firewood practices. Boulder County thanks The Western IPM Center, DontMoveFirewood.org, and the United States Forest Service as being wonderful partners on this collaborative education effort.

Webinar: Changing Movement of Firewood by Campers, on October 21st

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Join us for the 2nd edition of the 2015 FOCI webinar series, “Changing movement of firewood by campers: an eight year study of the effect of regulation and education” on October 21st, 2015 at 2pm Eastern. Learn about how Wisconsin used a combination of limited regulation and targeted persuasion to change public movement of firewood, what motivates people to move firewood (or not move firewood), and how the firewood professionals community can use this information to slow the spread of forest pests. Presentation will be led by Andrea Diss-Torrance, Invasive Forest Insects Program Coordinator with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

WEBINAR RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE: Changing movement of firewood by campers – stream recorded webinar (1hr 2min)

Note: the first 30 seconds while the webinar loads it may appear to be malfunctioning- and it gives a misleading message as if you have already watched the webinar. If you give it a minute to buffer and load, it should work well after that. Thanks for your understanding!

New threat to Hawaiian trees underscores need for prevention of spread

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Guest blog by Faith Campbell with the Center for Invasive Species Prevention

The Hawaiian Islands’ remaining native forests are dominated by the ʻōhiʻa lehua tree (Metrosideros polymorpha). The tree provides nectar for the Islands’ unique honeycreepers- a subfamily of native Hawaiian birds. These birds, the Islands’ one native terrestrial mammal (Hawaiian hoary bat), and many of its endangered plant species depend on ʻōhiʻa-dominated forests. ‘Ōhi‘a also has significant cultural values to the Hawaiian people through its connection to the deities Ku, Pele (volcanoes) and Laka (hula).

‘Ōhi‘a trees on the “Big Island” (the island of Hawaii) are being killed by Ceratocystis Wilt of ‘Ōhi‘a or Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death (Ceratocystis fimbriata).  First detected in 2010, the new disease had killed more than half the ʻōhiʻa lehua trees on an area totaling 6,000 acres by 2014. Another 10,000 acres had lower but still significant mortality. The infestation is approaching Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

At this time, there is no known protective treatment or cure for the disease but thankfully the disease has not yet been reported on any of the other Hawaiian Islands. Because it is not yet known exactly how the disease spreads, to protect the other islands, the Hawaiian Department of Agriculture has adopted an emergency quarantine prohibiting movement of ʻōhiʻa lehua flowers, leaves, twigs, wood (including firewood), mulch, and greenwaste, off the Big Island. To learn more about the specifics of the quarantine, visit: https://hdoa.hawaii.gov/blog/main/ohiaquarantine/

Forestry officials also urge people to avoid transporting wood of affected ʻōhiʻa trees to any new areas on the Big Island and to clean pruning tools, chain saws, vehicles, and shoes used off-road in infected forest areas.  People with homes at higher elevations and on the windward (wet) slopes – such as those living outside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park – do have wood-burning fires, and movement of ʻōhiʻa tree firewood to these homes should be avoided as a precaution. The native forests of Hawaii have many threats to their unique trees – making the need to avoid spreading this new and damaging tree disease all the more important.

  

For more information and complete citations, please visit the Ceratocystis Wilt of ‘Ōhi‘a gallery page

Two new features in the Gallery of Pests

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Don’t Move Firewood, in cooperation with Faith Campbell of the Center for Invasive Species Prevention, maintains the Gallery of Pests*. The Gallery of Pests is an extremely thorough look into the history, biology, and systems surrounding invasive pests that affect trees and tree-like perennial plants (such as columnar cacti) native and urban forest, desert, island, and rangeland systems in North America, Hawai’i, and the Caribbean. The Gallery is a unique resource in that its contents are thoroughly vetted and cited- and we are excited to reveal two new features to the Gallery.

The first feature is the new list of reputable web resources that has been added to the bottom of the more well-known and researched pests. For instance, the Asian longhorned beetle Gallery of Pests page includes the public eradication program’s website, the USDA APHIS programmatic website, the USFS website, Canada’s CFIA website, and several online outreach options. This list is not exhaustive, but rather it is selected for the most helpful, accurate, and informative resources.

The second new feature is that we have now clearly indicated all Gallery of Pests species that are either extremely unlikely, or completely unable, to be transported via the firewood vector. This include pests as varied as cactus moth, hemlock wooly adelgid, and spruce aphid. This additional information, found at the top of any Gallery of Pests entry for a species that qualifies as not transported on firewood, has been added to prevent confusion by readers of the Gallery.

Thanks for reading, and we hope this information is useful to all users of the Don’t Move Firewood website!

*the Gallery of Pests was renamed the Invasive Species Listing in 2017

 

Webinar: Introduction to Firewood Scout on August 14

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Join us for a FOCI webinar, Introduction to Firewood Scout, on August 14th at noon Eastern. This webinar will focus on Firewood Scout – a website designed to help the public find local firewood, and here at Don’t Move Firewood we are working with the folks at the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council and the Tennessee Chapter of The Nature Conservancy’s Forest Conservation program to promote this resource and encourage new states to sign up. Currently the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, California, and Tennesse are listed- and more states are wanted!

If you are a state agency employee, federal agency employee, or non-profit professional that wishes to learn more about how your state might join the Firewood Scout effort, we’re holding a webinar on August 14th at noon Eastern just for you! The webinar will cover what Firewood Scout is, how it works (in brief non-technical terms), how the membership model works, how much it might roughly cost to participate, and how states can join. Please note while this webinar is certainly open to the public, it will be tailored to professionals in the field- not to general interest.

This webinar is now completed:

 

Thanks for your interest!

firewood scout beaver and url

 

 

Emerald ash borer reaches Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Guest blog contributed by Faith Campbell, Center for Invasive Species Prevention

May we all pause to send our condolences to Maryland?

Maryland has fought for a dozen years to slow the spread of the emerald ash borer.  State agency leaders knew they had ash resources worth protecting:  more than 200,000 trees in the state’s principal city, Baltimore.  Ashes are the most common tree in the city.  The surrounding counties have even more- up to an estimated 6.5 million ash trees.

And millions of ash protect water quality and forest ecosystems of the native riparian areas and wetlands around the Chesapeake Bay.  Ash constitute about 4% of the state’s trees, with higher densities in the lowland and wetland areas of the Eastern Shore – the parts of the state east of the Chesapeake Bay.

Maryland almost defines itself by the Bay, so the state has focused on trying to prevent EAB from reaching the Eastern Shore. This summer, officials learned that they have lost that battle.

According to a report by Jonathan Wilson of radio station WAMU, EAB have been caught in monitoring traps in two counties on the Shore.

Officials suspect the beetle reached the Shore in loads of firewood driven across the Bay Bridge; the trap on Kent Island, the eastern terminus of the bridge, held dozens of beetles.  Steve Bell of Maryland’s Department of Agriculture says that means that EAB is well established and has already begun reproducing in the area.

Maryland staff checking a purple trap- photo courtesy MD Dept Agriculture, EAB Program

The story in Baltimore is a familiar one.  The city must find the $1 million it will cost to manage the 5,000 street trees that are ash species- and thus will be affected.  The city’s entire tree management budget is only $3 million dollars, so very difficult tree management choices loom.

Maryland has hopes that the parasitic wasps introduced as biocontrol agents might eventually curtail EAB populations and resulting damage. This is a potentially effective long term solution- only time will tell if it will work in Maryland.

In the short run, we know that trees vital to both urban and rural/wildland areas will die. So let us pause to mourn Maryland’s loss.

Editor’s note: the Federal Order for Maryland’s full inclusion in the EAB quarantine was released 7/23/2015, “APHIS Adds All of Maryland to the Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) Regulated Area”

 

Free downloads for National Moth Week

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Did you know that some invasive moths can travel to new places, and infest new forests and trees, on contaminated firewood? In 2022, National Moth Week will be July 23 to 31 and here at Don’t Move Firewood we are providing all our free moth-related materials and downloads to anyone that would like to learn more about how to identify or prevent the movement of invasive moths.

The two invasive forest pests that fit with National Moth Week are winter moth and spongy moth. Winter moth is a pest that could be spread in the egg stage via firewood. This pest is generally uncommon outside of New England and Nova Scotia. You can learn more about winter moth on the UMass Extension Program winter moth site.

Far more common than winter moth is the spongy moth. Spongy moths will lay their eggs on firewood as well as live trees, and any sort of solid outdoor objects (for instance, flower pots and lawn furniture can also become infested with egg masses).

Here are our favorite resources for spongy moth- enjoy!

spongy moth maskspongy moth no color Bug masks of both male and female spongy moths (Colored In or Line Drawn, thumbnails shown are for male moth- both sexes are included in the download) produced by Don’t Move Firewood. See French version.
Templates for making your own spongy moth caterpillar fake tattoo or spongy moth female adult fake tattoos, produced by Don’t Move Firewood
Identification video for spongy moth, produced by our partners at Outsmart Invasives and Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities
Educational website on spongy moth, produced by our partners at  USDA APHIS
Plant Heroes Spongy Moth Activity Books, produced by our partners at  Plant Heroes, a program of the American Public Gardens Association

 

 

Vermont’s Firewood Awareness Week: A blazing success!

Posted on by Leigh Greenwood

Guest blog by Mollie Klepack, Vermont Forest Pest Outreach Coordinator

In communities across Vermont, trees are marked with orange ribbon and tags exhorting everyone to “Protect This Tree, leave firewood at home.”

During the week of May 17-23 2015, citizens learned about this request as Vermont celebrated the important role local firewood plays in protecting our trees. The goals of Firewood Awareness Week were; to draw attention to the risks of moving firewood; to feature the social, economic, environmental, and personal impacts of invasive pests; and to educate the public about the upcoming state quarantine regulating the movement of firewood into Vermont. When the dust settled at the end of the week, 450 ash trees had been tagged at rest areas, campgrounds, and trailheads throughout Vermont;  4 rest area blitzes had been hosted by 13 staff and volunteers; over 18,000 people were reached through social media; and that was just the beginning!

Kim, the Park Ranger at Mount Philo State Park, stands with a tree tag for Vermont’s Firewood Awareness Week.

Highlights from Vermont’s Firewood Awareness Week include :

  • 450 host trees (which include maple, ash, birch, and poplar) tagged at 14 rest areas, 12 state parks, 1 federal campground, and 2 trailheads throughout Vermont.
  • Four rest area blitzes hosted at the Wiliston Northbound Information Center, Sharon Welcome Center, Fair Haven Welcome Center, and Bennington Welcome Center.
  • Over 500 visitors to Vermont’s rest areas entertained by Gwen the EAB and Smokey Bear, telling them to “Buy It Where You Burn It” at the rest area blitzes.
  • One University of Vermont Extension Across the Fence TV Show aired – Click here to view the episode!
  • Over 18,200 people engaged through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts
  • Don’t Move Firewood PSAs played on at least 5 community access TV stations, serving 47 towns across Vermont.
  • Over seven newspaper and newsletter articles published about the Awareness Week and an op-ed by Steve Sinclair, Director of Forests for Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation.
  • Three Front Porch Forum posts shared in at least ten Vermont communities.

Firewood Awareness Week was a collaborative effort of UVM Extension, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets; USDA/APHIS; U.S. Forest Service, and Don’t Move Firewood.

 

University of Vermont students visit the Sharon Rest Area Blitz, where they were greeted by Smokey Bear, asking them to buy and burn local firewood.

Plans are afoot to host another firewood themed awareness week in early summer 2016. Lessons learned and ideas for that effort include :

  • Rest area blitzes are a fun, easy way to reach visitors to the state.  The hours of peak visitation, however, do not easily line up with the standard workday, so it is important to carefully weigh the goals of the program vs. capacity to staff the event outside standard business hours.
  • Social media is a great way to get the word out.  One strategy that worked well for Firewood Awareness Week was to partner with other organizations and special interest groups to share content in order to leverage audiences and reach.
  • Don’t Move Firewood.org was a tremendous partner to provide advice and graphic design for materials such as banners, brochures, posters, and handouts.  Thank you Don’t Move Firewood!
  • An outreach avenue we will explore for future awareness efforts is to partner with grocery stores to provide Don’t Move Firewood brochures with their s’more and hotdog displays during the summer months.

You can view or download four of the outreach products used for this event here:

Vermont Forest Pest Outreach Coordinator, Mollie Klepack, will also be reaching out to other pest outreach programs in New England and New York to explore the potential of hosting a region-wide firewood awareness week.