The pine beetle's surprising northern foray

By KATHERINE HARDING
Thursday, October 19, 2006

GRANDE PRARIE, ALTA. — They blew by the millions into the dense forests
surrounding this thriving northwestern Alberta community on a strong Prairie wind in
July.

10/19/2006 - There were so many that a local dairy farmer thought he was hearing
rain tapping on his barn's tin roof.

Instead, it was an invasion of hungry mountain pine beetles, black grain-sized

insects that have already devoured billions of mature lodgepole pine trees in British
Columbia's Interior forests.

“We just had this massive blow-over from the Prince George area. . . .We never
thought they would hit us this hard, this fast,” said Pat Wearmouth, a senior forester
with Weyerhaeuser Co. Ltd. The giant forestry company is scrambling to help control
the infestation, which has the potential to keep marching east through Canada's vast
northern boreal forest.

Behind Mr. Wearmouth is a forest full of dying Jack and lodgepole pine trees. Many
of the lanky infected trees — some taller than a four-storey building — have been
tied in pink caution tape that reads: “Pest mgmt. zone.”

The full extent of the outbreak near Grande Prairie, a small city about 455 kilometres
northwest of Edmonton, won't be known until next year, when sick green trees start
turning a rusty red colour — a sure sign they have fallen victim to mountain pine
beetles. Soon after that, the trees turn grey.

While the infestation has been slowly spreading across the Rocky Mountains into
Alberta since 2002, the recent outbreak in Grande Prairie and surrounding areas
profoundly worries the forestry industry and provincial government because the
beetle is heading farther north than it was expected to go.

There is also evidence that the beetle, which once favoured mature lodgepole pine, is
now attacking the mature Jack pine of the boreal forests, which reach from B.C. to
Labrador.

“There's a chance that Alberta could look like B.C., and so could a lot of Northern
Canada where there is pine,” Mr. Wearmouth said.

The pest works quickly. In 1999, almost 165,000 hectares of the B.C. Interior's pine
forest was infected. By 2005, the number jumped to 8.7 million hectares.
And the number of infected trees in Alberta continues to grow. In 2005, there were
just 19,000. As of mid-October, there are an estimated 150,000, and next year's
number is expected to be much higher.

Mr. Wearmouth, a big, burly, bearded 58-year-old dressed in jeans and a blue-and-
black bomber jacket, has been a forester since 1971. He partly blames global
warming and the lack of cold winters for the destruction the tiny pest has been able
to inflict on Western Canadian forests in recent years.

“Mother Nature needs to give us a really good winter because I'm pretty convinced
that that is the only way we are really going to get it,” he said.

Mountain pine beetles are equipped with a built-in antifreeze system to survive harsh
winters; historically, however, the beetles have been no match for Western Canada's
cold.

But warm winters and fewer cold snaps in the spring and fall have allowed them to
thrive. Each infected pine tree can produce enough beetles to infect another 10 to 12
pine trees.

Even David Coutts, Alberta's Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, is kept

awake at night over this growing crisis, which has been likened to a silently
spreading forest fire. “They have gone into places that we never thought they would
go. . . . I pray every night that Mother Nature gives us minus-30-degree weather
this winter,” he said.

Alberta has spent $27-million on the problem since 2005. The province has hired
about 100 surveyors, called beetle probers, who are combing the forests this winter
looking for sick pine trees, which are then chopped down and burned.

Several forestry companies in Alberta, such as Weyerhaeuser, plan to identify as

many infected trees as possible this winter and harvest them before they turn red.

At least six million hectares of Alberta pine forest are at risk of being attacked by the
insects, according to some estimates.

“We are at war with the mountain pine beetle. And this year, Alberta is the
battleground,” Mr. Coutts said.

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