Quote:
| Originally Posted by Codger Of course if the government puts a bounty on those pine beetles I doubt that there'd be much of an argument. Flew low level through the rocks last summer and there's a lot of dead forest... |
Yes, it's very sad. Unfortunately it just doesn't get COLD enough to kill the pest anymore, and they have breached the Rocky's, it doesn't look good for Banff and Jasper.
As to the Forest Industry, it's Tanked a couple of years age with the collapse of the US housing market.
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Earth Forum PostsA steamy tale of sex, CO2 and destruction in the woods
Posted on March 19th, 2008
By Christa Marshall
Climatewire: Two years ago, Reese Halter, a biologist, paused in a forest in Grand Prairie, Alberta. He had noticed something odd: It was raining mountain pine beetles. After 40 minutes the pesky, voracious insects covered his hair and clothes.
“The sky was blackened, like it was a vicious hailstorm,” recalled Halter, the founder of Global Forest Science, an international conservation group. “They literally sounded like staccato machine guns as they hit farmers’ roofs.”
Millions of the beetles, known for ravaging pine forests stretching from Colorado to British Columbia, had gotten sucked into a massive wind storm carrying them eastward across the Rocky Mountains to Alberta. They had caught a ride on one of nature’s shuttles.
The insects’ introduction to the central part of Alberta resulted from their explosion on the Western side of the Rocky Mountains, a phenomenon helped by warmer temperatures. With global warming, many scientists are concerned that the beetles will thrive in a once-hostile part of Alberta and move into the pristine Canadian Boreal Forest.
The 2006 incident was the first time the pests settled in central Alberta, but they continue to move from British Columbia through valleys into southern Alberta, which has experienced beetle outbreaks in the past. Warming trends also could increase their numbers there, many experts say.
The mountain pine beetle, which is the size of a small ant, wreaks its destruction through a multistage process. In the late summer, the female of the species seeks out a tree to infest and takes a bite out of the wood of a suitable candidate.