Each strip of wood in Richard Silliboy’s hands started as a year of an ash tree’s life.

Silliboy, 79, is a member of the Mi’kmaq tribe and a master basketmaker. His blue eyes are kind and frequently crinkle into a smile, and his hands are constantly busy as he talks. In his workshop in Littleton, Maine, surrounded by logs, splints and the sound of country music, Silliboy says making ash baskets is “so peaceful and spiritual.”

His baskets are bound up in the past: the history of his tribe, his family and the trees themselves. But lately, Silliboy is thinking more about the ash tree’s future.

The emerald ash borer, an invasive species of beetle, is creeping across Maine, bringing the possibility of near-total extinction for the state’s ash species, and a potentially devastating loss to what Silliboy calls “the oldest art in the Northeast.” But so far, a majority of Maine’s trees are alive and healthy, and tribe members, scientists and government officials are trying to keep it that way.

The Basket Tree

There are five Wabanaki tribes: Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot. In all of their languages, the name for the brown ash translates to “the basket tree.”

In the Wabanaki creation story, the hero Glooscap shot an arrow into the basket tree and “out came the native people, singing and dancing,” Silliboy said.

Basketmakers favor brown ash because of the way its rings grow, without fibers connecting them. When a log is pounded with a mallet or axe, Silliboy said, the rings split easily and can be shaved thinner and cut into strips for weaving.

“It’d be strong as a piece of nylon, and it’s very pliable,” Silliboy said.

There are other materials used in basketmaking—cedar, birch, sweetgrass—but none are quite like brown ash. “There’s just no comparison” in the basket quality, according to John Daigle, a member of the Penobscot nation and the project leader for the Ash Protection Collaboration Across Waponahkik (APCAW), a group of researchers and tribe members working together on ash protection.

“You just don’t find those qualities in other trees,” Daigle said. “Ash trees in Maine are a really small percentage of our trees … but they’re just important trees.”

Wabanaki basketmaking goes back centuries. Post-colonization, it became an essential source of income. The large utility baskets were widely used on potato farms during the early- and mid-1900s, while smaller fancy baskets were sold roadside or door to door.

The drum-like sound of ash pounding is still recognizable on tribal lands.

“At some points in time, some elders said they could tell who was pounding based on the speed and the sound,” said Tyler Everett, 30, a member of the Mi’kmaq nation and doctoral student working with APCAW.

Basketry holds family memories. Everett lives in Maine today because his great grandparents moved from Nova Scotia to sell potato baskets. Daigle recalls his grandparents’ spare room filled to the brim with ash splints and baskets ready to sell. He hopes to take up basketmaking in retirement.

Silliboy’s earliest memories include helping his mother and brothers collect and prepare the ash splints. When he left home at 13, Silliboy swore he’d never touch another basket.

He came back to the artform in the 1980s, while helping basketmakers sell their work. Silliboy found that few makers knew how to properly find, harvest and prepare their own materials.

“I was quite discouraged about that, so I said, ‘I know how to do this,’” he said.

Concerted efforts by the Wabanaki tribes and teachers like Silliboy have led to a revival of interest in basketry. Two of his five children, and several of his grandchildren, have learned the artform. In 2017, with help from family, Silliboy created the “World’s Largest Potato Basket,” which was over seven feet tall.

“[It’s] something that’s really special, that we really need to try to retain and not give up,” Daigle said.

The modern resurgence of Wabanaki basketmaking, however, is threatened by the encroaching emerald ash borer and the potential loss of the basket tree.

“We’re all wondering what we can do about it,” Silliboy said.

“Uniformly Damaging”

Basketmakers and scientists in Maine were aware of the ash borer long before it reached the state.

The beetle, native to northeast Asia, was first identified in the U.S. in Michigan in 2002, where it caused near-total destruction of any ash stands it encountered. Its natural spread was aided unwittingly by people carrying infested firewood to new locations.

The ash borer has now reached 37 U.S. states and six Canadian provinces. Within five to 10 years of infestation, nearly 100 percent of ash trees die, Maine Forest Service entomologist Allison Kanoti said. All three species of ash in Maine are susceptible, though the brown ash seems to be slightly more so.

“It is a fairly uniformly damaging insect,” Kanoti said.

Daigle, who has worked on ash tree protection for two decades, said Maine held the ash borer at bay for a while with quarantines on out-of-state firewood and public education about how the insects spread.

Nevertheless, the ash borer arrived in 2018, first crossing from New Brunswick across the northern border and then into the southern tip of the state from New Hampshire. As of 2025, the state Forest Service has found ash borers in nearly every county.

Maine’s firewood quarantines are now internal, to try to keep the ash borer from reaching unaffected areas for as long as possible.

Daigle said many of the ash stands on tribal lands haven’t yet been infested, though it’s a matter of when, not if, that will happen.

“We’re very fortunate here in Maine, compared to other places in the country, that we still have the majority of our ash trees that are alive and healthy,” he said.

To keep it that way, some basketmakers are changing their harvest locations because of the quarantines, Everett said.

“If they hear that EAB is near an area, they typically avoid it,” he said.

As years pass, the signs of ash borer infestation in Maine will become more visible and more trees will succumb. A 2023 study predicted that 95 percent of Maine’s ash trees will be dead by 2040. It’s a “sobering” statistic, Everett said, but tribal and state experts aren’t taking it as a foregone conclusion.

“We have to have an all-hands-on-deck approach if we want to make meaningful progress before we reach that reality,” Everett said.

Saving a Species

Combining forestry science with native knowledge is at the heart of the “all-hands-on-deck” approach.

APCAW started in 2022 to make sure that efforts to sustain ash trees would also sustain Wabanaki basketry and respect the way tribes use the tree.

Wabanaki expertise “should be honored the same as a Western science perspective on how we should respond to EAB,” Everett said. “They have knowledge of the trees that you couldn’t find in any textbook.”

The Maine Forest Service focuses on slowing the rate of infestation and protecting existing trees, and encouraging private landowners like logging companies to do the same. More than 90 percent of Maine’s forests are on private property.

Kanoti said the Forest Service’s techniques include selective tree-cutting, which can make it harder for the ash borer to spread, and luring the insects into “trap” trees to be burned. The staff also inject insecticides into certain mature, seed-bearing ash trees to save genetic diversity.

The Forest Service uses parasitic wasps, which prey on ash borers, to check their populations, since the beetle has no native North American predators. Since 2019, the state has released nearly 175,000 wasps in infestation hotspots. While it’s too soon to tell how effective these techniques are in Maine, Kanoti said they have seen positive results in other states with longer histories of ash borer infestation.

APCAW is also looking toward future generations, Daigle said, by gathering and storing seeds from key locations. Ash trees don’t start producing seeds until they are more than 30 years old, and the seeds are only released every five to eight years.

“We’re just waiting for a good year to collect more seed,” he said.

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Those seeds will be preserved in seed banks, and some will get planted at the Passamaquoddy Ash Nursery, which started last year at Indian Township Reservation, near the eastern border of Maine.

“If EAB comes through and wipes them out, we need to replant,” said Everett, who is the nursery’s interim manager.

Right now, the nursery is small, with just a few seedlings in a converted community garden. But Everett foresees future community tree giveaways and planting days, and perhaps additional tribal nurseries. The goal is a new generation of trees that can replace what the ash borer wipes out.

APCAW, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and U.S. Forest Service researchers also want to study the genetics of “lingering” trees—those that survive an infestation—to see if they can cross-breed more resistant trees.

“Those five percent that lingered after EAB on the landscape, maybe it’s chance, but maybe they’re resistant,” Everett said.

He said the ash nursery could be a site to experiment with cuttings from those lingering trees to create stronger varieties.

“Trees that do well, we want to plant those immediately,” Everett said.

Daigle believes genetic research is “one of our most hopeful areas” for the preservation of ash trees.

Meanwhile, some basketmakers are preparing for the worst-case scenario: brown ash being almost completely wiped from the Maine landscape.

Since only a small number of brown ash trees are suitable for basketmaking, Everett said they can be harvested now, while still healthy, and stored for later use without harming the overall population. Some harvesters are storing ash logs underwater or freezing the prepared splints to save for future use.

Everett said his kids and grandkids might learn basketmaking with splints collected many years beforehand, until a new, more resistant generation of ash trees can be developed.

Cascading Impacts

As Wabanaki basketmakers fight the destruction of the basket tree, their work is complicated by concerns over the very methods that could save the species.

Everett said some tribe members are troubled by the Forest Service’s tree cutting to prevent ash borer spread, from the ecological damage of heavy equipment to the waste of ash wood left unused. Others are concerned the parasitic wasps could become invasive, like the insects they’re supposed to stop, and cause unforeseen issues.

Everett and Daigle have spent a lot of time talking with people about the precautions taken with wasp releases and their success in other states.

Insecticide treatments also have a potential downside. Basketmakers frequently hold the strips of ash wood in their mouths while working, Everett said. If they harvest in an ash stand treated with insecticides, there is the possibility of toxic chemical exposure.

“They’re always making contact with the tree, so if you’re injecting it with a chemical, what sort of impact is that having on their health?” he said.

“Basketmakers will often talk about brown ash as a relationship.”

— Tyler Everett, Mi’kmaq nation

And while the tribes have been leading the way on ash seed collection, Everett said some are hesitant about genetic work that fundamentally changes the brown ash tree, even if it makes the trees more resistant to infestation.

“Basketmakers will often talk about brown ash as a relationship,” he said. “You have that relationship with the tree, it’s been passed down from generation to generation, and if you genetically modify it, what sort of cascading impacts might that have in the forest that would impact that relationship?”

Everett said part of his job is making sure those concerns are considered when the Forest Service is planning its ash borer response. APCAW and projects like the Passamaquoddy Ash Nursery are ways for the Wabanaki tribes to maintain a voice in the decisions being made for Maine’s ash trees and seeds, he said.

“By being there and being a grower in those efforts, we can make sure that we’re participating in things the tribe supports,” he said. “This is our way of giving back and taking care of this tree that’s taken care of our family for so long.”

Cautious Optimism

Genetic research and replanting work are multi-decade efforts, with a lot of unknowns still to be resolved. In the meantime, many of Maine’s existing ash trees will likely succumb to the ash borer. But Daigle is optimistic about the eventual replanting of a new, hardier generation.

“We’ll never have, probably, the same population of ash trees that we have now, but the hope is that they can re-establish themselves,” he said.

Everett said the overlap of different protection and restoration techniques makes it more likely that they will succeed.

“All the components are there to really be a well-oiled machine for fighting for this tree, which is exciting. The network is there, the people are there,” he said.

The short-term loss of Maine’s ash trees, however, is going to create heartache.

“It’s going to be very hard for tribal basketmakers and harvesters seeing a lot of dead and dying ash trees,” Daigle said.

Even if they can use other woods or synthetic materials, it won’t be the same, Silliboy said.

“It’s going to be devastating. It’s going to be goddamn difficult to sell a ‘traditional’ plastic basket,” he said. “I think probably some people are just going to get discouraged and give up basketmaking.”

But Everett believes people will hold onto those skills for a future day when the basket tree population rebounds.

“There’ll be some really challenging times,” he said. “We are really resilient people, and we will find a way to continue our artistic expression. Adapting is not something that is foreign to us.”