Minnesota DNR Releases 2025 Forest Health Report
Explore Minnesota’s forest health trends
The Minnesota DNR released its 2025 forest health annual report as the year drew to a close.
The report is based on the DNR’s work in aerially surveying 13.5 million acres of Minnesota for damage to forests. The Forest Service (USFS) provided funding, survey software, and data storage for these surveys.
A quick recap of the positives and negatives in the report:
“The state’s forests received sufficient precipitation in the growing season of 2025 to limit oak and aspen-birch decline.”
There were no news counties confirmed with oak wilt for the first time in 2025. However, “the number of counties with known oak wilt remains at 33”, according to the DNR announcement.
Prior spruce budworm damage in northeast Minnesota helped fuel two large wildfires in May that consumed about 28,000 acres of land.
Eastern larch beetles killed tamaracks on over 100,000 acres for the ninth consecutive year.
A derecho in late June devastated at least 11,600 acres of forest in the Bemidji area.
The full report is available here:
https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/...