It’s National Invasive Species Awareness Week!

Maine’s forest trees are under attack from multiple invasive forest insect pests, and the threat of new pests invading Maine is constant. Invasive insects such as emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid will forever change Maine’s forests as they spread and continue to kill trees throughout the state, while other invasive pests like browntail moth affect quality of life and human health. Other invasive insects like Asian longhorned beetle or diseases like oak wilt have similar potential to damage Maine’s forests if they arrive here. The Maine Forest Service has a strict out-of-state firewood ban to prevent devastating introductions like these and natural resource managers everywhere continue to encourage the use of local or heat treated firewood only. At DACF, the divisions of Forest Health & Monitoring and Animal and Plant Health, working together as Maine Bug Watch, continue to monitor and control invasive insects and diseases whenever possible.

The illegal stocking of species like northern pike, black crappie, or largemouth bass can have the most significant and obvious impacts to Maine’s native fisheries, but sometimes the release of new fish species can occur for other reasons. Often these illegal acts are intentional, like when someone wants a certain species of sport fish in a lake close to their home. Unintentional introductions can happen as a result of negligence related to threats found in an angler’s bait bucket. While the level of threat from this type of introduction may be less than that from the intentional establishment of large predatory species, impacts to native fish populations can occur. DIFW already limits the fish species that can legally be used as bait and prohibits the unauthorized importation of baitfish from outside the state as two strategies to reduce risk, but recently a third strategy was employed to increase awareness related to using live fish as bait. In January of 2020, DIFW changed fishing regulations in northern Maine to prohibit the use of live fish as bait under the general law and only allow fishing with live bait fish on certain waters (which are specifically listed inMaine’s Open Water and Ice Fishing Laws). This change reinforces the importance of this region’s abundant native and wild fishery resources and stresses the potential damage to those fisheries when baitfish are introduced where they don’t belong.