Oregon growers are turning to self-funded measures in their fight against the Japanese beetle. Although specifics are still being worked out, growers shipping to states that quarantine for the pest will need to enter into compliance agreements. They likely will need to either pay for detection and trapping themselves, or pay the Oregon Department of Agriculture to have it done.
Costs are unknown at this time, but these new measures are what’s needed to reassure officials in quarantine states and keep markets open, now that the state of Oregon is no longer funding Japanese beetle eradication, OAN Executive Director Jeff Stone told a large group of OAN members in a Zoom briefing in early November.
“With your blessing, we’re not going to wait for others to help out,” he said.
Plant pest regulatory officials in some states that quarantine for the Japanese beetle, such as New Mexico, became less friendly to Oregon shipments after the state discontinued its Japanese beetle eradication program in September.
It was widely considered a model program. Since 2017 Oregon has seen a 92% reduction in the JB population. ODA reports a total catch of 1, 919 adult beetles in this past 2025 season which reflects a 65% decrease from 2024 — evidence that the consistent trapping and treatment program within infested counties is working.
The program ended because it was left out of Gov. Tina Kotek’s budget. Subsequent attempts to secure $2 million in funding through the Oregon Legislature fell short, despite strong lobbying from the OAN.
Stone and the OAN then met with ODA officials to try to come up with other answers and preserve Oregon’s access to quarantine markets.
Most markets in the Eastern U.S. are not affected because they are already infested with Japanese beetle and can’t quarantine for it. However, Oregon growers could be blocked from shipping without a compliance agreement to certain Western states that do quarantine for it. Such states include Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Washington.
Oregon remains one of the states that quarantine for Japanese beetle, even though the pest is present. The detections have been confined to limited areas, so the state is not considered infested. In fact, Oregon’s nursery production areas do not have any known sites of infestation. Most such sites are in the Cedar Mills neighborhood of Portland, with a few in Lake Oswego and East Portland.
“Many of you if not most of you are not actually at risk of having Japanese beetle on your nurseries,” ODA Plant Division Director Chris Benemann told growers on Zoom. “Where we have these sites are not within agricultural production areas. They’re within urban neighborhoods.”
Benemann said she met with the director and deputy director of ODA to get the effort started, and that she anticipates many further meetings.
“[ODA] Director Lisa Charpilloz Hanson was pretty clear that nothing comes for free, so we’re going to need buy in from the industry for what has to happen,” Benemann told growers on the Zoom call.
Stone agreed. “No one likes compliance agreements, but if you want to ship, we’re going to have certain standards that we have to meet,” he said.
Growers on the call indicated they would be supportive.
The market access protection plan is not a replacement for the comprehensive eradication effort that ended this past September. Instead, the plan is designed to meet the import requirements of other JB-free states in the western U.S., and Canada.
The lack of a trapping, testing and treatment program in Oregon causes concern for certain states receiving Oregon plant material. The pest is already widespread in the eastern United States and these states implement their own control programs to keep JB out of their production areas. In Intermountain and Western states, however, the pest has a much more limited presence.
The OAN still intends to apply for eradication funding to the state’s Emergency Board in December. “We still need to regain a statewide trapping program,” Stone said.
