As the mountain pine beetle continues its march east of the Rockies through Canada's boreal forest, officials in Alberta and Saskatchewan are working to draw a proverbial line in the sand.
The beetle continues to gorge on trees in British Columbia and has gained a firm foothold in Alberta.
Experts are trying to halt its spread before it enters Saskatchewan's northern woodlands, where, if it adapts, it would have an unlimited buffet that would allow it to spread into other parts of the country .
The beetle is already established - but under control - in Saskatchewan's southwestern corner in the Cypress Hills area, where it is a natural part of the ecosystem.
But Rory McIntosh, provincial forest insect and disease expert for Saskatchewan's Ministry of the Environment, says a proactive approach is needed to halt any further eastward trek.
"These insects are remarkably adaptable and you need massive mortality rates for a population not to be able to grow to epidemic levels," he says.
Mountain pine beetles prefer mature lodgepole pine trees, which are unable to produce enough sap to repel them.
The beetles drill through the bark and introduce a blue fungus that kills the tree.
In B.C., firefighting has substantially reduced the number of forest fires, which in turn has allowed the number of lodgepole pine in the B.C. sub-boreal spruce forest to triple since 1911.
Climate change has also offered a helping hand.
"Take milder winters, drier summers and triple the number of host trees and it provides the conditions for a perfect storm - the conditions for an unprecedented epidemic," says Rod DeBoice, B.C.'s provincial park beetle co-ordinator.
More than 13 million hectares of forested land in B.C. has been infected by the beetle - the equivalent of 17 million logging trucks parked bumper to bumper.
The beetle also poses a significant threat in Alberta, where it has infested the province's jack pine forests.
"Science shows the mountain pine beetle is not as virulent in jack pine, but the blue fungus (it produces) is more virulent and it's the blue fungus that is the killer," adds DeBoice.
Surveys indicate a relatively high over-winter survival rate for the beetle - which can only be killed off by extensive periods of frigid winter weather - in southwestern parts of Alberta. There are also pockets of infestation in northern and west- central parts of the province.
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) is preparing for a "long-term threat" in portions of the province, says Joanna Byers, SRD's mountain pine beetle information officer.
Meanwhile, the economic impact of the destruction is still being tallied. DeBoice says B.C. ships about $10 billion of forest products from its interior each year.
"Pine makes up about 30 per cent of our working forest, so it will have a significant economic impact over the next two to three decades, at which time the younger pine forest will once again be available to the forest industry," he says.
B.C. has spent $640 million on mitigating the beetle's impacts since 2001.
Alberta's spending includes $134.3 million, in the 2006-2008 fiscal years, with a further $55.2 million budgeted for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.
Saskatchewan, which has increased its aerial surveillance and monitoring of the beetle, is spending $190,000 on monitoring and detection, as well as providing additional in-kind and real funding to research.
The province has also recently designated the beetle as a pest under its Forest Resources Management Act, giving the province increased powers in the regulation, inspection and movement of wood.
It also continues to enforce a 2002 moratorium restricting the importation into the province of pine forest materials with attached bark.
"The purpose is to keep the beetles out of the province, not to have a negative impact on trade or commerce," says McIntosh.
In some areas of B.C., however, the battle appears to be waning. DeBoice says in communities such as Prince George, Quesnel and Vanderhoof, the beetle infestation has collapsed.
Yet in other areas, including regions near the Alberta border, it is not expected to peak until 2015.
There is also renewed optimism in finding new markets for mountain pine beetle-infected wood.
Vancouver-based Forestry Innovation Investment Ltd. (FII), set up in 2003 by the province to promote B.C. wood products and forest practices internationally, has invested $5.63 million over the past three years into projects looking at fibre quality, manufacturing processes, and product and market development for pine beetle-damaged wood.
The studies include determining the shelf-life of dead trees; examining the impacts of increasingly dry pine logs coming into the mills; identifying and qualifying other markets for blue fungus-stained timber products, as well as research to determine the impacts on the pulp and paper industry of a changing chip/pulp resource.
"Our mandate is to table the work and make it available, should that opportunity come to be," says Robert Parisotto, FII's mountain pine beetle program director.
"There likely will be no big home run that's going to solve this issue.
The commercial uptake might not be there in all of the research projects, but you won't know unless you try."
Research is also being undertaken by Genome Alberta, a not-for-profit corporation funded at federal and provincial levels to focus on genomics research in Alberta.
Genome Alberta and its partners, including Genome BC, are looking at the interaction between the tree, the beetle and the blue-stain fungus.
"We're not predicting any silver bullets in this, but are anticipating a couple of areas of significant interest," says Genome Alberta's president and CEO David Bailey.
"The infected trees that have already been damaged by beetles and the fungus - there is a chemical substance released that tells the other beetles that this is a good tree to come to.
"What happens if we disrupt this signalling pattern, so that the beetles are confused? It may slow down their ability to forage, eat the trees and reproduce," adds Bailey.
Understanding the beetle's genetic sequence would also help research into other tree pests, he adds, including the southern pine beetle, which is making its way into Ontario, and the bark beetle, which is already prevalent in parts of the United States.
Beetle mania
The mountain pine beetle is a small, black beetle about the size of a grain of rice. Over the past few years, mountain pine beetles have been expanding east into Alberta from British Columbia.
Some facts: * Once a beetle has found a suitable tree in July or August, it will live there for the remainder of its life and lay eggs. The new generation of beetles will not emerge from the tree for at least one year.
* The beetles attack and kill pine trees, usually mature ones aged 80 to 120 years. All species of pine, including lodgepole, jack pine, scotch pine and ponderosa pine are vulnerable. Pine can be distinguished from other trees by their long needles attached to branches in clusters of two to five.
* Infested trees usually die within a year.
Source: Genome Albert (Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)
