By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
The province has declared a state of emergency to tackle the mountain pine beetle infestation that has impacted 3 million trees in the province — including 10,070 in the southern Rockies.
On April 11, Premier Ed Stelmach’s cabinet approved the state of emergency recommended by Ted Morton, minister of sustainable resource development (SRD) and the MLA for Foothills-Rocky View.
Continuous infestations detected along Alberta’s eastern slopes from Grande Cache to Fox Creek, Slave Lake to Grande Prairie, north into the Peace Country, and in the Spray Lakes and Crowsnest Pass areas prompted Morton’s recommendation.
The government will dip into the province’s emergency sustainability fund as well as seek federal money to deal with the pest. The funding will be put towards air and ground surveillance crews to identify infested trees.
In 2006, SRD asked the federal government for $100 million over three years and has used $50 million of provincial money, which expired the end of March, to help deal with the beetle. Of the $50 million, $46.5 million was used through the emergency fund, said Duncan MacDonnell, public affairs officer for the SRD.
Since Aug. 15, 2006, about 10,070 infested trees have been detected in the southern Rockies, as of March 1, MacDonnell said April 12.
Of that amount, Christie Ward, forest health officer at SRD’s southern Rockies office, said April 13 that 6,327 infested trees have been found in Kananaskis Country, including Spray Lake Provincial Park, Bow Valley Provincial Park and Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. In Spray Lake Sawmills’ forest management area, four have been found in the Jumping Pound Creek area and one has been found in the Ghost Lake area. None have been found in Bragg Creek, she said.
To date, the Grande Prairie area has been the most impacted with about 2.5 million infested trees. Blaine Burke, public information officer for SRD’s Smoky region, said though they are still green now, they are expected to turn red, and die, in the next few months.
In January, Ottawa committed $200 million to British Columbia through the Federal Mountain Pine Beetle Program to fight the bug and address its impacts on communities and forests. The beetle has infected 9.2 million of 12 million hectares of B.C. pine trees.
“This is a national issue,� not just a problem for Alberta and B.C., MacDonnell said. “This is a forest ecosystem problem,� he said, adding that values of healthy fish and wildlife, clean air, recreation opportunities as well as the logging industry are at stake.
Jack pine trees are located predominantly in the boreal forest across Canada and so are just as susceptible to the mountain pine beetle as lodgepole pines, Ward said. The federal government has acknowledged the pests can make their way east as they run of out of lodgepole pine, which is why it has allocated money towards stopping the spread, Ward said.
Ralph Cartar, president of the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition and a University of Calgary ecology professor, was disappointed to hear of the state of emergency for something he believes is not a crisis.
“It suggests that the government is not paying attention to science in their strategy.�
Cartar said April 13 that the mountain pine beetle will destroy trees, not forests, and so should be left to run its course naturally rather than fought with clearcutting. He believes Kananaskis’ “pathetic� trees will not be appealing to the beetle in terms of their size.
“Even if we fail at this, to nip the epidemic in the bud, it doesn’t matter,� because of the tree sizes in southern Alberta compared to B.C., he said.
But Cartar said the epidemic is not going to spread out of control because the beetle will not attack every tree.
“(The SRD makes) it sound like the forests will be wiped out by the beetle,� he said, adding that though a large percentage of trees in B.C. were hit, that amount may not have necessarily died.
The only way a tree’s defences can be overwhelmed is if an abundance of bugs are attracted to it at one time, when one bug releases a resin that draws others, Cartar said. That only usually occurs when the tree is large, since for the beetle “there is no pay off with little trees.�
Cartar said he is not against removing trees, he is against removing forests.
“We have to hold SRD and Spray Lake to be custodians of public forests,� for their social, environmental and economic values, Cartar said. “Removing forest is not an appropriate response.�
Ray Schultz, assistant deputy minister, mountain pine beetle emergency response for the B.C. ministry of forests, said the 9.2 million hectares of trees killed in B.C. include “very light attack� to “heavy attack� trees. That area is also equivalent to an estimated 582 million cubic metres of timber, or about 1.6 billion trees.
From what B.C. has learned, cut and burning is only effective when the attack level is light, Schultz said. Scientists have told the ministry that 80 per cent of the beetle population have to be destroyed to suppress their spread, so clearcutting then, is often the most effective tool, he said.
Spray Lake Sawmills’ woodlands manager Gord Lehn was happy to hear the announcement: It helps provide a lot of validation (that) it is a real problem and a big problem.�
Lehn said this is the Cochrane company’s first time dealing with a rapid spread of the pine beetle, but about 25 years ago in the Crowsnest Pass area, it worked with SRD to target the beetles before cold weather killed them off.
This time around, the SRD will conduct aerial surveys of forests probably in September, after the beetles begin to fly in August. Crews will then determine if dead or discoloured trees were caused by the pine beetle, and if they are, they will be classified as either level one or level two stands. Level one trees are individual trees that need to be cut and burned to kill the beetle, and level two stands are groups of trees that will need to be harvested.
At the request of the SRD, Spray Lake changed its operating plan to concentrate on areas most susceptible to the beetle this summer.
The Jumping Pound area was modeled as a susceptible area and the infested trees were confirmed during field work, he said.
Trees that have been infected still have two to three years to be salvaged as a saleable product, though green trees are preferable because they are not as brittle, Lehn said.
He has said the pine beetle is a societal and environmental issue, not just a lumber industry problem. Rather than letting the pine beetle run its course and leave “a sea of dead trees,� logging will enable reforestation sooner.
Lehn and Cartar agree that diverse forests are more healthy, but Cartar said the company will only replace logged forests with more pine.
Lehn said the company will replenish forests with a mix of species, including spruce and pine.
“In my perspective, the best way to manage for a healthy forest is to have a diverse forest,� he said.
Lehn also agreed that the beetle is not going to kill every tree in Alberta, but noted that B.C. will lose 80 per cent of its mature pine forests by 2010.
“We’re still hoping we can learn a lot from what has gone on in B.C.�
RSS SUBSCRIBE