BC Scientists Await Worst As "Catastrophic" Beetle Infestation Continues

[hatrack]

Pine beetle poised for worst assault yet
Infested area already five time the size of Vancouver Island
Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service
Friday, July 11, 2003

"Entomologist Allan Carroll will be watching, with a mixture of horror and fascination, as billions of tiny beetles scramble out of their holes in coming weeks and take flight in search of trees to kill.

This summer's assault is expected to be the worst yet in an infestation described as catastrophic. The mountain pine beetle has already attacked trees on nine million hectares -- an area five times the size of Vancouver Island -- and is poised to chew through millions more.

'I expect the area attacked will double in size again this year,' says Carroll, a beetle biologist with the Canadian Forest Service who will head to the woods next week to help document the carnage.

The infestation, which took off in 1998 and shows no sign of slowing down, has caused the biggest forest kill by insects ever seen in North America. The dead and dying trees, visible from the air as huge swaths of red and grey forest throughout central British Columbia, are casualties in an environmental disaster that scientists say has been fuelled, at least in part, by climate change.

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The B.C. infestation may be the biggest, but it is not the first bug attack linked to climate change. Dead spruce forests in Alaska and the Yukon, killed by the spruce bark beetle in the last decade, are also being described as a monument to climate change. Researchers have shown that a succession of warm summers allowed that beetle to reproduce at twice the normal rate, creating a population explosion that overwhelmed the spruce trees' natural defences."

EDIT

From Canada.com