Budworms once again ravaging Maine’s fir and spruce trees [Video]

A spruce budworm outbreak has plagued Maine’s northern borders for nearly two decades, with the tree-killing moths making sporadic incursions from Quebec but never reaching numbers that suggest a repeat of the outbreak that ravaged the state a half-century ago.

This summer, though, state entomologist Michael Parisio’s heart sank as he surveyed the northwestern woods of Aroostook County by plane. A 3,000-acre hotspot of partially denuded spruce-fir forest below suggested the once-a-generation outbreak everyone had feared may have begun.

The patch of defoliated trees near Little East Lake just east of the Canadian border was a sign the native budworm population had grown so large that its consumption of fir and spruce needles was visible from a thousand feet above the forest.

“We’ve had a few scares here and there, but 3,000 acres, that’s significant damage,” Parisio said. “That is a hotspot that won’t go away in a year. All …