Spruce trees in Alberta and British Columbia have been added to the mountain pine beetle's dining list.
But experts say it's unlikely that this will mean a second front in the devastating pine beetle blight, which has resulted in 582 million cubic metres of dead pine trees in B.C. - equivalent to what the province would harvest in its sawmills in 15 years.
Last year alone, the beetle infected 9.2 million hectares, or three times the size of Vancouver Island.
And while the beetle is on the move - having already crossed into Alberta - officials in both provinces aren't too worried about the beetle's latest menu choice.
"Essentially it's a mistake by the insects because there are so many of them," says University of Northern British Columbia entomologist Staffan Lindgren, who calls the situation isolated. "The beetles, they always make mistakes and try to enter unsuitable hosts of one sort of another."
A series of unlikely events would have to occur before this development becomes a major concern, Lindgren says, including the beetles adapting to a new host and finding a niche where they could survive.
"We've known of attacks on spruce for a long time. It's very common, but they don't manage to kill the spruce," says Lindgren, who is studying what happens to the beetle when it attacks a different host.
In fact, attacks on spruce trees may actually work against the beetle, which is about the size of a grain of rice and attacks and kills pine trees - usually mature ones that are 80 to 120 years old.
When they go after non-pine hosts, they aren't able to reproduce in the necessary numbers needed to maintain their growth cycle, says Bill Wilson, director of mountain pine beetle policy and research for Natural Resources Canada.
Wilson, based in Victoria, says when they enter a mature pine tree, the beetles can spawn enough offspring to further attack eight to 12 trees. But in the case of turning to a spruce tree, chances are there aren't enough to go any farther.
"We believe the main beetle epidemic in B.C. has another two years of play - that's the amount of food left for it," says Wilson, who says that the outbreak could implode at that time.
But that doesn't mean Alberta can sit back and relax, because there's been a slow leak of the mountain pine beetle into southern Alberta from the B.C. border.
Gordon Miller, director general of the Edmonton-based Northern Forestry Centre - a science-based policy organization within Natural Resources Canada - says the situation is worse in the province's northwestern sector around the Peace River region.
Miller notes there has been an unexpected massive beetle influx, with some of the insects having already moved eastward to the Slave Lake area.
"Nobody was expecting the expansion of the infestation in such a short time frame," says Miller. "People have actually seen clouds of beetles going up in the atmosphere and the wind just pushes them along."
Miller is not too worried about reports of beetles being found in spruce trees in B.C., saying it just shows that some of them are hard up for food.
The beetle is actually native to the pine forest in western North America, but has grown out of control in part due to human suppression of forest wildfires that have left many more mature pine in the forests than would normally exist.
While both B.C. and Alberta move forward with plans to battle the pine beetle infestations, Wilson says the forestry industry is trying its best to deal with the cards it's been dealt.
"Our traditional pine harvesting used to represent 40 to 45 per cent of what we harvest. Now it's up to 70 to 85 per cent - it varies from area to area," says Doug Routledge, vice-president of forestry and northern operations for the Vancouver-based Council of Forest Industries (COFI), whose 44 members operate more than 65 forestry manufacturing facilities in B.C.
"Up until about two years ago, almost everybody was able to switch gears without too much problems."
But the long-term economic impact is now becoming evident, Routledge adds.
"We're beginning to see a significant decline in the quality of the standing timber - it has mostly to do with trees dying, drying out and cracking," he says. "Any time a tree dries, it will crack and with cracked trees it's more expensive to make lumber out of them. There are lower yields and lower grades."
But the B.C. forestry sector is slowly adapting and finding new uses for damaged timber.
"People are being innovative about producing (goods) out of damaged timber previously thought being uneconomic," says Routledge.
Alberta's forest industry is working closely with the provincial government to enact aggressive and quick mitigation and control strategies, says the Edmonton-based Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA).
This includes changing winter harvesting plans this past year to harvest infested pine stands and those deemed most susceptible to a mountain pine beetle attack in the coming year, the AFPA says.
(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)
