Local forest managers are bracing for increased forest health impacts and wildfire risk in coming years, due to an intense and ongoing spruce budworm outbreak.
This small caterpillar has caused mass spruce and fir defoliation across Northern Minnesota, with 1.3 million acres affected between 2020 and 2024 — a number which ballooned by 712,000 acres in 2024 alone. Many trees never recover.
“It got all the way east to Lake and Cook County,” said Tower Area Forest Supervisor Brian Feldt, “Now it’s coming back. It’s like the wave of it crashed upon Lake Superior. Now it’s reverberating back across the landscape.”
The dead and dying trees pose a significant wildfire risk, acting as highly flammable fuels that can boost flames from the ground into the canopy. This type of wildfire cannot be stopped with “any amount of aviation resources,” says Feldt.
“We’re very fortunate we didn’t have a 15,000-acre fire in our area,” said Tower Area Natural Resources Specialist Victoria Jari, “But it could very easily happen here. We definitely have the fuels. We could be like Brimson, Greenwood, Camp House.”
Several factors drive the ongoing outbreak, including a reduction in forest disturbance. Wildfires have long been suppressed across a “checkerboard” landscape interspersed with towns and cabins, and the lumber industry has seen a steady decline for decades.
“You get that disturbance, which reduces the amount of balsam that’s available,” said Feldt, “You see a lot of the worst budworm effects where you’ve seen the balsam increase in abundance such that it’s the primary thing.”
“We’ve lost a lot of loggers. We’ve lost a lot of consumers,” Feldt said, “All these mills have shut down. Now you have way fewer people out there managing the forests.”
Proximity to the few remaining lumber mills is critical for covering the cost of balsam removal and thinning. Ely and Tower, however, are prohibitively distant from these facilities.
“We exist in an area with poor markets on shallow, poor soils,” said Feldt.
Areas that have fared better — including Cook, Embarrass and central St. Louis County — may share one or more characteristics which are not as common near Ely: heavy management
or lumber operations, agricultural fragmentation to hinder budworms’ spread, and deeper, nutrient-rich soils that increase drought resistance and forest resilience.
However, even these localities have begun to feel the impacts, says Feldt. The future is uncertain. Unique from historical events, this outbreak seems rooted in winters that simply aren’t as cold as they used to be.
“We used to at least hit -43℉ once a year,” said Jari, “We’re not hitting that every year.”
“It’s not as common,” Feldt added.
This is the threshold temperature which will cause mass mortality of wintering budworm larvae, says Jari. Without extreme lows, and alongside longer and warmer growing seasons, the population does not fade out on a predictable 10-year timeline anymore.
“(Outbreaks) used to be very cyclical in nature, and now it’s just kind of continuing to persist,” said Feldt, “It could be more like a 20-year life cycle now and going forward.”
To combat risks associated with mass spruce and fir mortality, the Kawishiwi Ranger District implements initiatives such as HiLo on the Echo Trail and the Fernberg Corridor Landscape Management Project. Both aim to reduce fire hazards and ameliorate the outbreak through activities such as timber harvest, dead balsam removal and prescribed fire. Pending final planning decisions, the Fernberg project is set to impact about 175,000 acres around Fernberg Road beginning in 2026, while HiLo began in 2019.
Local state parks have also increased budworm management activities, reports District Resource Specialist Tony Lenoch. Over the past decade, Lake Vermilion - Soudan Underground Mine State Park strategically eliminated balsam fir on 20-30 acres, planting resilient seedlings such as white pine, red pine, bur oak and red oak in replacement.
Bear Head Lake has leaned into fuel reduction, clearing fir trees near the beach to create a fire-safe space. This timber is stacked and burned in the winter or crushed under tracked vehicles.
The DNR’s Tower Area Division of Forestry, on the other hand, runs much broader operations on state lands regionwide. Additionally, Jari leads a program to assist private landowners with spruce budworm management.
“It’s become more of a priority, especially after 2021 and you had the Greenwood Fire,” Jari said, “That got people moving and thinking about managing their own properties.”
Last year, she visited about 50 homes to provide landowners with strategies for improved forest health and fire resistance.
“Generally, the visit results in them either removing the balsam on their own, or enrolling in one of our costshare programs, where the DNR helps fund some of this project work,” said Jari, “We push the forest into its next stage, promoting fire-adapted conifers like white pine and red pine, and also northern hardwoods.”
Interested property owners may call or email the DNR to arrange a visit and learn about financial incentives.
“We look at the site characteristics and say, this is heavy removal, or it’s light removal, and assign them a rate and say, okay, you have one acre and I have $600 for you,” said Jari, “They get paid on the back end. You can do that (work) yourself, or you can hire it out.”
After a follow-up site evaluation to confirm completion, the DNR offers an additional cost-share program to assist landowners with about 50-75% of the price for new seedlings.
Programs like these represent the many steps local foresters are taking in the here and now to build healthier woodlands, despite an uncertain future.
“If you did end up having a really cold winter this coming season, a historical-type winter where we used to hit 40 below a couple times, that would certainly have an impact,” said Feldt, “If we have a really mild winter and then we have a drought? It could potentially get much worse.”
He advocates for a waitand- see approach.
“We just keep doing the management, keep utilizing as many of the tools in our toolbox as we can, and working with our other public land agencies,” said Feldt, “We’ll see what next year brings.”
