burning stoves, driving the price of freshly cut firewood to a new high this week. "I've never heard of prices like this," said Peter Lammert, a senior official at the Maine Forest Service. "I know of no one regulating the firewood business, and the market could be in a semi-panic mode." Maine has more trees in proportion to its size than any state in America, covered about 90 percent in forest, or about 17 million acres (7 million hectares). But the firewood industry has been in decline for more than two decades, and stocks of cut wood are low. "Last fall if you could believe it, there was a wood shortage in Maine. People couldn't keep up with demand. There were some firewood dealers and some paper mills in the state that couldn't find enough product," said Killinger. "In the 1970s and 1980s the business was a joke," he added. "There was no money in it." Demand started to go up after President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, he said, reckoning prices of firewood will keep rising with oil prices. --More 2359 Local Time 2059 GMT
