Howard Hedstrom, president of Hedstrom Lumber Company, came before the Cook County commissioners on April 8, 2014 to give them an update on the coming gypsy moth quarantine to be imposed by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) on Cook and Lake counties beginning May 1, and he had some good news.
“The forest service industry has negotiated a new agreement [with the MDA] with how we transport wood and how we store wood,” Hedstrom said.
“With the old agreements, we would be severely hurt, but the MDA is putting together new [compliance] agreements. They have loosened up and made compliance agreements that are acceptable to store and utilize raw materials and won’t be a deterrent to us,” Hedstrom said.
Wood shipped into Hedstrom Lumber from outstate will be covered by the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), and haulers will have to get training and certification to haul the wood, said Hedstrom.
One issue that is still being worked out is if it will be safe for Hedstrom Lumber to ship bark to the Twin Cities.
“In our business, we don’t burn all of the bark we produce. In the summer we separate it and ship the bark as a landscape product. They [MDA] deem bark as a problem because they don’t want to ship egg masses to a non-quarantine area.
“But we strip the bark and put it through a hammer mill and we think that will take care of the problem,” said Hedstrom.
The MDA will use Hedstrom Lumber mill as a test site to see if the bark carries any gypsy moth eggs after going through the mill’s processing. “They have the capability of bringing in moths that lay egg masses and they will check them. I’m not sure if they are looking for zero risk or a diminished risk, but I think they are looking for a greatly reduced risk,” said Hedstrom.
Another breakthrough for the forest product industry came when a study was done to see how dense the population of gypsy moths was around lumber mills. “We did—not me, other people—did an analysis of all these traps that were GPS monitored and were able to take that data and analyze it in a mile circle around the mills. What we found was that the capture data was lower (fewer moths) than the background data. APHIS took that and looked at it and found that to be true for other mills. Now they will make rules that are applicable for the mills around the country,” said Hedstrom.
“For us, we are feeling a lot better. There will still be a quarantine and there will be some impact on tourism, but we are hoping the public gets attuned and won’t get scared off because of the quarantine.”
The state tried to slow the spread of gypsy moths in Cook County through a variety of treatments starting in 2006 in Schroeder. Last summer MDA-employed gypsy moth trappers caught a record amount of the moths and the state decided to impose a quarantine to slow the spread of this invasive species which has no known enemies in America.
Minnesota is now the 21st state to have a quarantine for gypsy moths. Under the quarantine rules, loggers and lumber mill owners have to form compliance agreement with the state regulating how they store and how they transport their wood. Fines can range up to $7,500 for non-compliance.
The MDA is urging people moving mobile homes or even campers and boats to look for and dispose of gypsy moths or their larvae when traveling from one place to another.
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