The Minnesota Department of Agriculture on Wednesday announced new pest quarantine will be put in place to protect Minnesota’s pine forests.

The exterior state quarantine is designed to stop the movement into Minnesota of any wood potentially infested with mountain pine beetle.

The quarantine starts Thursday and includes all logs with bark from 13 western states where the beetle has ravaged forests in recent years.

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They hope that the quarantine might stop the beetle from hitchhiking on bark-covered pine logs trucked into Minnesota.

University of Minnesota scientists already have determined that the beetles, which are as close as the Black Hills of South Dakota, will indeed colonize and destroy native red, white and jack pine that make up much of northern Minnesota’s famed forests.

They are native to the western United States and Canada. The insect spends most of its life in the area of a pine tree between the bark and the wood. The adult beetles can release a pheromone, or natural scent, to attract other beetles and eventually they may overwhelm the health of entire stands of pines to the extent they all die. This makes the mountain pine beetle one of the most damaging forest insects in North America.

Recently, these beetles and their larva have been found by MDA in wood brought into Minnesota. This quarantine will reduce the risk of the human-aided movement of the insect from happening again.

Minnesota state officials have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to intervene, to keep wood from infested provinces out. The quarantine would limit the import of pine wood with bark from western state’s with known infestations.

Tagsminnesota, Quarantine Minnesota, Mountain Pine Beetle, invasive insects, beetles, insect infestation, pest quarantine, pine trees