By John Seewer
The Associated Press

SYLVANIA - State highway patrol troopers stopped cars and campers at checkpoints Thursday along the Ohio-Michigan state line. They weren't looking for drunken drivers or drugs - just firewood.

Ohio has banned bringing firewood into the state from Michigan, where a tree-killing beetle no larger than a small paper clip has killed or infested 8 million ash trees.

"People are going to be very surprised to have checkpoints at the state line," said Craig Stough, mayor of Sylvania, a Toledo suburb. "But it's a critical enough issue that we need to stop traffic."

Ohio Agriculture Department officials think firewood is at least partially to blame for the spread of the emerald ash borer into the state, where it has killed thousands of trees, mainly in the Toledo area. The state cut down thousands more to try to stop the spread.

The firewood checkpoints, the first in Ohio, are targeting campers and people traveling for the Labor Day weekend, said Melanie Wilt, spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department.

They operate much like DUI checkpoints used by police departments nationwide. Troopers and local police randomly stop vehicles and search some trunks for firewood.

Authorities handed out pamphlets explaining problems with the ash pest to 300 cars in three hours Thursday afternoon at one of two checkpoints. They searched a handful of cars and confiscated one load of firewood.

Sally Rochotte, of Blissfield, Mich., said she was a little surprised that she was stopped and asked whether she was carrying firewood. Inspectors decided not to search her minivan.

"I guess we didn't look like we were going camping," she said.

Although authorities could issue fines of up to $10,000 for violating the firewood ban started last September, they plan only to give out warnings and to confiscate wood, Wilt said.

"Our goal is not to ruin the holiday of vacationers," she said. "It's a big camping weekend, so we see it as a good opportunity to educate people about the quarantine."

The two checkpoint sites, which will continue through Friday, are on secondary roads in the Toledo area.

"To set up a true quarantine between here and Michigan involves a lot of roads," Stough said. "They're not trying to stop contraband. They're trying inform people."

The state plans more checkpoints later this year and likely will search along busier routes.

Scientists suspect the insect arrived from Asia about a decade ago. It kills every tree it attacks and its larvae live beneath the bark and bore into its tissue, stopping the flow of water and nutrients.

Researchers fear that if the ash borer spreads, it could lead to widespread devastation much like Dutch elm disease, which ravaged more than half the nation's elm population after being discovered in Ohio in the 1930s.

Many towns that lost elm trees replaced them with ash trees, thought to be a hardy, disease-resistant tree.

Michigan, where the ash borer was first discovered in the United States two years ago, has banned the movement of all firewood out of 13 counties.

The state has been checking vehicles at highway rest stops for more than a year - mainly around warm weather holidays and hunting season.

At four checkpoints during Memorial Day weekend this year, inspectors found 101 vehicles that were taking firewood out of the quarantine area, said Sara Linsmeier-Wurfel, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

All of the wood was taken away and chipped into bits, she said.