The Council meets regularly with representatives of both federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, N.C. State Forest Service, N.C. State Parks, N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, and N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources to discuss issues that impact public lands and the citizens of western North Carolina.  

Recently the council has learned about the threat of forest pests such as the emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle, and thousand cankers disease. These pests are not native to the U.S. so our trees have no natural defenses against them. Moreover, these pests can be transported great distances through the movement of firewood. There are currently no federal regulations regarding the movement of firewood across state lines, unless the wood is from a quarantined area.  

If left unchecked, the forest pests that are currently in the U.S. will devastate dozens of tree species. It is conservatively estimated that if these forest pests were to become established in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they would have the potential to wipe out 50 percent of the forested area in the park. Massachusetts has had to spend over $100 million just to combat the Asian longhorned beetle; entire forests, including over 10,000 trees in residential areas, had to be cut down and ground into fine mulch. The Asian longhorned beetle infestation in Ohio, discovered in 2011, has already necessitated the removal of well over 60 thousand trees from backyards, parks, and wooded areas.

We have witnessed the decline or loss of several of our native trees to exotic pests: American chestnut (chestnut blight), eastern hemlock (hemlock wooly adelgid), and flowering dogwood (dogwood anthracnose), just to name a few. This new suite of forest pests has the potential to wreak additional damage: impacting the wood products industry, harming tourism, decimating our mountain forests, and costing taxpayers billions.

Because of the dire threat that these pests pose to our forests, Great Smoky Mountains National Park currently only allows certified heat-treated firewood inside the park.  Campers must either gather wood inside the park or purchase certified heat-treated wood from over eighty local vendors. The council applauds these efforts to protect Western North Carolina’s “crown jewel” which is also the most visited National Park in our nation.

While Great Smoky Mountains National Park has taken aggressive steps in keeping these pests out of the park, there are still millions of acres of national forests, state parks, state gamelands, and state forests where firewood outside of North Carolina can still be legally brought in by visitors. Instead of having a confusing patchwork of different regulations for our federal and state lands, perhaps it is time North Carolina acts more aggressively against these exotic pests by prohibiting the movement of all firewood into the state.  

States such as New York and Pennsylvania, who have been dealing with these new pests for a longer period of time, have taken pro-active steps to try and prevent these pests from becoming established in other areas of their state. These steps include prohibiting the movement of any untreated firewood into the state. These common sense regulations ensure that folks who heat with wood can still harvest firewood locally, while helping to prevent firewood pests from being moved to new locations. This type of regulation has the added benefit of encouraging out-of-state visitors to buy firewood in North Carolina, which would give a boost to local rural economies.  

Living in an increasingly connected world means that new forest pests will undoubtedly be introduced into the U.S. and North Carolina. But we can take measures to prevent most of these introductions:

• Don’t move firewood from other states. 

• If you are camping on public lands, consider using local wood or wood that is certified as being heat-treated (it burns hotter and cleaner anyway). 

• If you heat your home with firewood, please use firewood that is harvested locally.

• And lastly, please pass the word to others that these pests pose a real threat to our forest. You can learn more at Don’tMoveFirewood.org.

(Jason Love of Otto in Macon County is the chairman of the Western North Carolina Public Lands Council.)