By Brennan Clarke | Saanich News | Mar 17 2006
In the theatre of war, most battles are fought to be won or lost. But for public officials charged with fighting the province's pine beetle epidemic, the name of the game is damage control.
Just seven years ago, the province's mountain pine beetle infestation was limited to 164,000 hectares. By 2002, the pest had ravaged close to two million hectares and last summer the total amount of affected forest topped 8.7 million hectares.
"Most of the mature pine forest in the Interior is now engaged," said Rod DeBoice, B.C.'s provincial beetle co-ordinator. "It's been an exponential increase."
While the province isn't ready to admit defeat, DeBoice admitted that the best chance of slowing the destruction - barring a sudden reversal of the decade-long trend toward unseasonably warm winters - will come when the voracious little creatures simply run out of trees to eat.
"Most natural epidemics end up eating themselves out of the host," said DeBoice, who is known to his colleagues as the "beetle boss."
"Younger pine forests are not susceptible and by 2013, 80 per cent of what we call mature pine forests will have been destroyed."
Rather than trying to stop the spread of mountain pine beetle west of the Rocky Mountains, those efforts last year shifted east of the Rockies as researchers discovered pockets of mountain pine beetle in Peace River country on both sides of the B.C.-Alberta border.
"In terms of the actual battle, most of that is now taking place in the Peace District where there's a small scattering of beetles east of the Rockies," said Bill Riel, a researcher with the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria.
"We're pretty confident we're not going to be able to stop them in B.C. There isn't really much we can do about it."
Given the sheer magnitude of the problem, cutting down infested trees isn't a viable option, Riel said. Not only would it be impossible for even the most radical cutting program to keep pace with the infestation, flooding the lumber market with millions of hectares of additional lumber could have serious economic consequences.
"Those are socio-economic issues that have to be dealt with at the political level," he said.
Pine beetle researchers are still trying to figure out how the tiny insect, which has trouble surviving in sub-zero temperatures managed to traverse Canada's highest mountain range.
But the leading theory, said Riel, it that beetle populations have designated fliers that find their way into air currents high above the forest where winds carry them for hundreds of kilometres.
"They way they move is by flight and one theory is that some of them are programmed to try and get up above the canopy for what we call long-distance dispersal," he said. "They become like a particulate."
The problem has even caught the attention of the U.S. Forest Service, according to an article that appeared in the Washington Post earlier this month.
The article said U.S. Forest Service officials are "watching warily as the outbreak spreads," but noted that the United States is less vulnerable because it lacks the "seamless forest of lodgepole pines that are a highway for the beetle in Canada."
Colder temperatures may help keep the pine beetle at bay on the east side of the Rockies, Riel said.
"That's why we have a chance to control it there," he said. "They're in some areas, but they're not doing exceptionally well."
So far, Mother Nature hasn't co-operated. Environment Canada reported this week that the 2005-06 winter was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1948. Temperatures for December 2005 through February 2006 were 3.9 degrees Celsius higher than normal. December in Victoria saw the mean daily temperature at five degrees Celsius, a full degree above the 30-year average, while the mean average in January was 6.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the norm of 3.8 degrees. While they're not experts in climate change, most pine beetle researches blame the bug's proliferation on global warming, Riel added.
"We're really looking at the whole climate change issue. We've seen very unusually favourable conditions for the beetle," he said. "They're showing up in places we haven't seen them before. They're sort of a canary in the coal mine."
Given the scope of the outbreak, DeBoice said it would take a severe cold snap to make a dent in the problem. Ideally, the cold weather would hit in the early fall or early spring, since the pine beetle goes into dormancy and produces a kind of internal anti-freeze that helps it withstand the coldest parts of the year.
The province remains determined to battle the beetle, but it's also taking a realistic approach to the problem that includes replanting, repairing damaged streams and forest ecosystems, recovering value from infested wood and retooling the economies of Interior communities that will no longer be able to depend on the timber supply.
The province committed $100 million last year which will be spent over the next three years. There's also $161 million in a fund called Forests for Tomorrow that will be doled out through the 2008-09 fiscal year and a $185-million fund called the Northern Development Initiative Trust that generates ongoing interest that can be used for pine beetle-related issues. (+)
