Pine Beetle Devastates Canadian Forest, May Fuel Global Warm

[birgco]

By Christopher Donville

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Erica Lee's foe is small yet mighty.

She's fighting an invasion by the mountain pine beetle, an insect the size of a grain of rice that threatens to destroy forests across North America.

``What we're experiencing in western Canada is an infestation of pine beetles of a magnitude never before seen,'' said Lee, 34, who is the Alberta government's top specialist on the insect and a leader in efforts to contain it. ``The potential to spread to eastern parts of the continent is very real.''

The beetle, officially Dendroctonus ponderosae, has killed half of British Columbia's mature lodgepole pines since 1999, according to the provincial government. It forecasts that 76 percent of the trees will be dead by 2015, as climate change makes it easier for the insects to live at higher elevations and in northern latitudes.

Beetle damage is threatening as much as C$40 billion ($39.2 billion) of lumber products in British Columbia and reducing government revenue from the sale of tree-harvesting rights, according to the Council of Forest Industries, a Vancouver-based lobby group. Trees with the equivalent of 177 billion board feet of lumber are infested, enough to build 11 million homes.

Now the plague may threaten the boreal forest, which extends as far east as Newfoundland and into the U.S. The forest usually absorbs carbon dioxide, which is linked to climate change. As trees killed by beetles rot and burn, the wooded land may instead become a net producer of the gas, said Allan Carroll, 44, a pine beetle specialist with the Canadian Forest Service.

Sad-Looking

``The pine trees were a deep, dark green and really majestic,'' said Darleen Hendry, who has a view of dead and dying pines from the front window of the bed-and-breakfast she runs in Quesnel, 660 kilometers (410 miles) north of Vancouver. ``Now they're so sad-looking.''

Many people thought the Rocky Mountains provided a natural barrier for Alberta, said the provincial government's Lee. In 2006, thermal updrafts carried the beetles into northern Alberta, threatening C$27 billion of pine forest lumber. Scientists say they were surprised by how many bugs invaded and survived.

``We always thought we had a climate that would prevent the pine beetles from taking hold up here,'' said Gordon Sanders, woodlands manager for Alberta Plywood Ltd., a subsidiary of West Fraser Timber Co. in Slave Lake, Alberta.

Climate Change

Higher temperatures reduce the frosts that prevent the bugs from thriving in northern and higher areas, Carroll said. While the beetles are native, warmer winters and hotter, drier summers in recent years allowed more of them to reach maturity, he said.

The beetle's next prey may be the boreal forest, about 1.5 billion acres (607 million hectares) of woodlands stretching from Alaska across Canada to the Atlantic coast, dipping into the northern Great Lakes states. The boreal forest has an abundance of jack pines, which are shorter than lodgepoles and may have fewer natural defenses, Carroll said.

Jack pines may become a kind of forest highway for the beetle's invasion of eastern North America, he said.

``This is of absolute concern to us,'' said Thomas Schmidt, assistant director for research at the U.S. Forest Service in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The insects attack trees by boring beneath the bark, where they feed on an inner layer called phloem. They spread blue-stain fungus, which becomes a food source for their larvae and inhibits the trees from increasing resin output to fend off the beetles.

Spraying insecticides isn't cost-effective because the creatures spend all but a few days of their lives beneath tree bark, Carroll said.

Beetles Gang Up

The beetles gang up on their victims, emitting chemicals that attract other beetles to swarm the tree. Each one measures 4 to 7.5 millimeters long, less than a third of an inch.

They thrive in pines 60 to 80 years old, which are in abundance because of decades of successful forest-fire suppression, Carroll said.

``We could actually have a kind of synergizing effect between the beetles, dead jack pines and wild fires,'' said Carroll, who has studied the pine beetle for more than a decade.

Canfor Corp. and West Fraser, Canada's largest lumber producers, are rushing to harvest wood before it rots. The dead trees are more expensive to process because of wear and tear on machinery, and some of the wood is too dry to be made into lumber, the council said.

The timber industry in central British Columbia, which accounts for almost a fifth of the province's economy, may contract 20 to 40 percent within 25 years, according to a report prepared for the Business Council of British Columbia and the Council of Forest Industries.

`Very Powerful Message'

The damage shows what may be in store for eastern forests, said Dennis Charlebois, a carpenter.

``It's pretty disturbing to see,'' said Charlebois, 53, who lives in Jasper, Alberta. ``This small little beetle delivers a very powerful message.''

Lee, meanwhile, is on the front lines in Alberta, which committed C$55.2 million to battle the beetle this year by cutting down infested trees, stripping tree bark and using controlled fires.

``We're fighting on behalf of other forests across the continent,'' Lee said. ``The beetle doesn't respect borders.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Donville in Vancouver at cjdonville@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 18, 2008 03:01 EDT

[Antisthenes]

it's the whole west and so 5+ years ago.

yes it's ugly but most beetles seem to have gone back to sleep, for the time being.