Maine’s private and public forestry partners are active in the monitoring, detection, and responsiveness to spruce budworm. The Maine Forest Service began monitoring for budworm with pheromone traps in 1992 with just four cooperators and 100 monitoring sites across the state: Maine Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, JD Irving, and Penobscot Nation. The program now consists of over 20 cooperators and around 350 long-term monitoring sites each season. Annual monitoring efforts by the Maine Forest Service are available for viewing on their website and include pheromone trap catch numbers, aerial and ground defoliation surveys, and annual summary reports.

The Maine Spruce Budworm Task Force was created in 2013 by the Cooperative Forestry Research Unit, Maine Forest Service, and the Maine Forest Products Council. This concerted effort aims to continuously assess and effectively communicate the risk that high levels of spruce budworm populations pose to forest health, the forest products industry, recreation and tourism, and other environmental impacts that might ensue during an outbreak.

The Spruce Budworm Lab was launched in 2021 as a way of monitoring the overwintering larval stage (L2) of the spruce budworm. Funded in part by the Cooperative Forestry Research Unit, the lab is key in helping landowners track and potentially mitigate any populations that are near the threshold potential of an outbreak.