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Pine beetle's orgy of trees drawing to an end in B.C.TheStar.com - Canada - Pine beetle's orgy of trees drawing to an end in B.C. Insatiable pest has left half of pine forests in ruins but dead timber may be used for energy March 26, 2008 VANCOUVER–British Columbia's epidemic of the mountain pine beetle is nearing an end after the voracious pest has destroyed nearly half of British Columbia's marketable pine forest. The beetle has infested 13.5 million hectares of lodgepole pine in the province – an area more than four times the size of Vancouver Island. While the beetle continues its push east past the Rocky Mountains and into B.C.'s southern interior region, there is little left for it to survive on in the province's central interior area where it's been thriving for decades. "The pine beetle populations have moved on. The epidemic is fundamentally over," said Doug Routledge, vice-president of forestry with the Council of Forest Industries. "The pine stands in the core part of the province ... have collapsed." The latest figures from the B.C. government and the council estimate the beetle has consumed more than half of B.C.'s marketable pine forest. About 710 million cubic metres of timber is in either the green, red or grey stages of attack by the beetle, which bores into the trees to lay eggs and attract mates. The beetles infect the tree with a fungus and the hatched larvae then feed off the fungus before the tree dies and they move on to another. Trees are "green" in the first year of infestation. Red refers to the rusty colour of the pine's needles when the beetles and the fungus they carry kill the tree. Grey describes the last stage when the tree is dead and the needles are gone. Routledge said the beetle's rate of spread is slowing because the rice-sized bugs have to go to higher elevations to reach new trees and two cold snaps in two years in the northeast have slowed their progress. "Now that's not to say they're not still at epidemic levels. They are." Routledge said the collapse of the industry will be hard on some forest-dependent communities, but new technology has extended the life of the beetle-killed wood. "While it does represent a significant impact to the province, of course we have other species out there, conifer species, that we can harvest," he said. Routledge said new technology and harvesting techniques are extending the life and use of beetle-killed trees by several years. B.C. Forest Minister Rich Coleman said there is a shift coming in the industry toward more bioenergy. "There's no question it's way overdue. It was probably overdue before the pine beetle kill," he said, noting the heavy waste left in the forest after trees were cut. The high Canadian dollar, rising fuel prices and low demand from the U.S. housing market offer little incentive for companies to cut wood of questionable value. "We're facing a lot of negative factors in terms of trying to address the mountain pine beetle," said Rick Publicover, executive director of the Central Interior Logging Association. Publicover's group, based in Prince George, B.C., represents independent logging contractors, haulers, road builders, equipment suppliers and some workers. He said many association members are pinning their hopes on continuing work on bioenergy, which would see wood pellets made out of the dead wood to burn for heat and electricity. "The hope is the quicker we can get on to the bioenergy front and then (we can) figure out how to make that work," Publicover said. Joe Foy, of the environmental group Wilderness Committee, said studies show a dead forest creates less wetland if it's left standing and is healthier than a cut block three decades later. Foy is against using federal or provincial money to subsidize a bioenergy industry for the trees. "Even though it's called green power, it still puts a hell of a lot of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the air," he said. Original Article: http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/350937 |
