BELLAIRE, MI – An invasion of beetles is coming, and it will bring another wave of damage to the already battered Michigan Northwoods.
Participants at last week’s annual Michigan Society of American Foresters conference in Bellaire discussed how bark and wood-boring beetles can be expected as the next environmental and economic disaster to strike up north forests. It’s more fallout after a devastating ice storm wreaked havoc on hundreds of square miles of Northern Michigan forests nearly three weeks ago.
It’s now an all-hands-on-deck situation for loggers, truckers, and mill workers to address the glut of damaged timber strewn across the impacted 10-county region before the damaging bugs arrive.
‘Cutting Swiss cheese’
Michigan forestry experts said there’s a near-certain attack of wood-munching pest insects on the way, and the expected infestation will begin in only a matter of months. The clock is already ticking.
“It’s very likely that pine beetles and other wood borers are going to come in based on the damage,” said Ingrid Aguayo-Fuentealba, a forest engineer with Michigan State University’s Department of Forestry, when the conference microphone was brought to her the morning of April 10.
She suggested there’s no time to waste to salvage as much value as possible from the damaged red pine stands across Northern Michigan. Delays will cost even greater financial losses because of damage from the ravenous pest insects, she said.
“By the time you get the logs to the sawmills, they’re cutting Swiss cheese,” Aguayo-Fuentealba said about what she saw in Canada after a similarly catastrophic ice storm struck eastern Ontario and upstate New York in 1998.
What happens is the widespread scent of freshly damaged pine – caused by terpenes in conifer resin – attracts pest insects such as bark and wood-boring beetles. Vast amounts of red pine stands were struck by the recent catastrophic Michigan ice storm from March 28-30.
Bark beetles and their associated fungi eventually cause internal blue-streak stains within infested wood. Wood-boring beetles also create large feeding tunnels throughout the wood, like the way emerald ash borer larvae feed.
Bark beetles expected in ice-damaged Michigan forests
These expected wood-eating beetles are native insect species in Michigan, unlike the ash-borer invasive species. Still, the beetles can cause significant timber damage when populations explode.
Foresters at the conference agreed the race is on to pull what value they can from the wrecked woods before the losses are compounded by the coming pest insects.
Longtime forester Keith Martell, a private consultant for the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said the roomful of foresters made up the largest forestry “brain bank” available in Michigan. He sought suggestions from the crowd about how best to recover from what he called the ongoing forestry “disaster.”
“We do some salvage work. We clean up the trees that are broken and damaged,” Martell said. “Do we leave seed trees? And what’s going to happen to the seed trees if we do leave them? Are they going to be just further fodder for a legion of bark beetles?”
The consensus among participants was that this single damaging storm will leave an historical mark on Michigan’s timber industry. First came the devastating initial ice damage that destroyed decades worth of timber plans on both public and private lands. Next will come the expected beetle infestation to further sap salvaged timber values.
“The more droughty it is, the more they’ll come in. But you’re probably looking at another month or two before it’d be a huge problem,” said Wes Windover, procurement manager for Biewer Sawmill in McBain. “We’re going to try to salvage as much as we can and saw lumber out of it while it’s still good.”
“If it goes too far or gets a lot of bugs or blue stain in it, they’ll end up taking saw logs for pulp wood.”
Windover said private landowners are already logging their damaged trees. “It’s going to be whoever gets there first who’s going to get their wood harvested and actually get some dollars out of it,” he told the conference crowd.
Meanwhile, DNR officials continue to assess the damage and organize how to bid out state salvage cut contracts. State officials this week even said a volunteer action plan is in the works to help with storm cleanup.
Brenda Haskill, DNR timber sale program manager, confirmed the state has procedures to follow based on past salvage situations caused by storms, forest fires, or major wind events. “We’ve had these things, never at this scale. So, we do have guidance. We’re finalizing that now,” she said.
Haskill said DNR officials also are working to enact a policy for logging operators to shift gears from current state timber contracts so they can instead help with salvage cleanup.
“We know we have to be responsive, because we have to make sure that the entire industry is able to continue and recover from this,” she said.
Less value and logjams
It remains to be seen how much construction-grade lumber can quickly be pulled from Northern Michigan’s ice-damaged forests before the beetles become a factor.
One forester said it may not even be worth the risk of salvaging logs for high-value framing studs. He explained how in many cases internal splits within wood grains won’t be visibly detected until the end of a lengthy and costly lumber production process.
“The problem with the damaged wood a lot of times is the bending and the impact when it hits the ground,” said David Kossak, wood procurement representative for the PotlatchDeltic lumber mill in Gwinn in the Upper Peninsula.
First, harvested logs are milled into boards, and then those rough-cut boards are stored in a yard for a couple months before being dried in a kiln. Only after finally being run through a planer to smooth the boards do any cracks show up, Kossak said.
He said it may be a safer move to simply chip salvaged wood for making paper pulp, particleboard, or oriented-strand board used in buildings. Chipped wood typically brings about half the value of regular timber, but even the lowest-valued wood can be sold for fuel at biomass power plants.
And there are more problematic logjams around the bend for damaged timber cleanup.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not enough people in the industry to harvest it all at once,” said Justin Knepper, executive director of the Michigan Association of Timbermen trade group.
“Even if we could use as much of it as we possibly can, can the loggers get things moving and out of the woods quick enough? When you have to cut your way in and cut your way out, it slows things way down and it costs more money,” he said.
An overabundance of red pine on the market also creates its own problem. There will simply be too much raw wood to entirely process within its limited shelf life before the beetles arrive.
That’s because only so many commercial lumber mills in Michigan process red pine, like those in McBain and Gwinn, though 2023 statistics show the species accounted for just over half the state’s softwood timber volumes. Officials said even small, Amish-owned mills can only take a couple of truckloads a day.
Knepper said the final complicating factor is how trucking costs make even top-dollar harvests worth moving only so far, let alone busted-up salvaged wood. “I’ve talked to loggers, not even regarding the ice storm, that actually are breaking even or losing money every time they haul wood past a few hours away,” he said.
Yet despite the multitude of challenges, work is underway. Michigan’s timber professionals remain seemingly determined to face this unprecedented situation, no matter how long it takes.
“The trees will get salvaged, whether they get salvaged for something that’s got a lot of value, or they get salvaged for something that’s fuel chips,” Windover said. “Eventually it’ll all get cleaned up. It’s just going to take a while.”
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