If you plan to go camping this summer at Mammoth Cave National Park, you may want to take along a little extra cash.

You will need the additional money to buy firewood, especially if the firewood you have came from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, which are now under the United States Department of Agriculture’s quarantine for the Asian emerald ash borer.

National park officials aren’t allowing campers to bring in firewood from states north of Kentucky for fear it may contain the borer, a beetle responsible for killing millions of ash trees in southern Michigan since 2002.

According to a press release issued by the national park, the half-inch long green beetle lays eggs in bark crevices on all species of ash. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into the bark and create feeding tunnels that interfere with the tree’s ability to transfer nutrients and fluids. The trees gradually starve and die.

“We want to make sure visitors understand that they shouldn’t bring anything from home and if they have it, we need to bag it up and get rid of it,” said Vickie Carson, spokesperson for Mammoth Cave National Park.

Mammoth Cave National Park officials have hung purple, triangular-shaped traps in trees throughout the park to detect the arrival of the beetle.

According to the press release, the beetles are attracted to the color purple and odors that smell like stressed ash trees. The trap exterior is coated with a sticky material that captures the insects for periodic removal by park staff.

“We will be checking (the traps) throughout the summer and into the early fall,” Carson said.

Mammoth Cave officials are not the only ones prohibiting campers from bringing in firewood. The Kentucky Department of Parks and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are also not allowing campers to bring in any firewood from the quarantined states.

If park rangers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spot campers with license plates north of Kentucky at any of the campgrounds around Barren River Lake, they will question the individuals.

“If they bought it outside the state of Kentucky, we go ahead and burn it unless it came from (states) south of Kentucky,” said Ranger Dave Dahle, who added that firewood brought in from any state south of Kentucky is OK.

As for Kentucky’s state parks, Chris Kellogg, spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Parks, said, “We’re still asking people to not bring firewood from out of state.”

If the firewood campers bring into Kentucky’s state parks is kiln-dried, then the beetle would have been killed in the drying process, she said.

Campers can tell if firewood has been kiln dried if it has a USDA sticker on it, Kellogg said.

Campgrounds at Mammoth Cave National Park, as well as those who make up the Kentucky State Park system and campgrounds managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all have firewood for sale.