Fourth of July is a great holiday - and one of the biggest camping weekends of the year. Smart campers like you know that moving firewood spreads pests. So what do you do when you notice your friends brought firewood from home? Or someone in the next campsite over has out of state license plates and their own stock of wood?

- Tell them about the problem with firewood in simple terms. "Did you know that when you bring firewood from home, that can spread bad bugs that kill trees?"

The Don't Move Firewood blog has dormant lately for technical reasons, but we are back! While we were away, a friend sent me this on email. For background, this friend lives in the Kalispell area, in Montana, which is near Glacier National Park.

Just a few hundred miles away from Bismarck, North Dakota, a Green Menace is wreaking havoc with city trees—destroying tree-lined streets and causing property damage.

That menace is the emerald ash borer. And it made its way into St. Paul, Minnesota in early spring of 2009. Though it hasn’t been detected in nearby North Dakota, the city of Bismarck is bracing for the worst—just in case the invader makes a jump across the border.

It turns out that the Asian longhorned beetle has been useful for one thing recently. And it’s not what you might expect—a drug bust.

In an unexpected twist of fate, Canadian border patrol agents on alert for invasive pests wound up nabbing drug smugglers for 1.7 tons of hashish. The drugs were hidden—convincingly— in a 19 crate shipment of masks and statues from South Africa.

But the would-be drug smugglers’ plans were foiled by the wood used in the crates. Authorities flagged the wood to check for any pests attempting to hitch a ride into the country.