Pineplague A bevy of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, forest managers, The mountain pine First Nations and environmental groups from Alberta and British Columbia gathered last May at Calgary’s Hyatt Regency for an urgent beetle rampage has and unprecedented summit on a bug the size of a rice kernel. Inside a cavernous hall equipped with several large screens, one PowerPoint crossed the Rockies presenter after another offered alarming maps of an impending invasion that could change continental geography as we know it. and is now threatening The enemy, “a slow-moving tsunami,” had crossed the Rocky Mountains and was poised to wreck ruin all the way to Labrador. Only to devastate Canada’s Alberta’s watchful foresters stood in the way. At the end of the two-day meeting, David Coutts, Alberta’s Minister of Sustainable Resource entire boreal forest Development, solemnly asked the crowd to pray for divine intervention in the form of a frigid winter. Canada’s boreal forest, however, may need BY ANDREW NIKIFORUK more than prayers, for Dendroctonus ponderosae is coming. The mountain pine beetle should need no introduction. Spurred by climate change and decades of effective fire suppression in Canada’s western forests, the bug is now the author of the worst insect infestation in North American history. Since the late 1990s, the six-legged menace has consumed 12 to 13 million hectares of lodgepole pine forest in central and northern British Columbia, an area nearly twice the size of New Brunswick that includes some $40 billion worth of the province’s most commercially valuable timber. A significant proportion of that will be unrecoverable. By 2013, the government estimates the insect will have killed 80 percent of the province’s mature lodgepole pine and, in so doing, will have played out scientists’ worst-case scenario: the beetle simply won’t stop until it has eaten its way out of house and home. Now, D. ponderosae has parachuted into Alberta, a completely new territory populated by a potentially tasty new treat, Jack pine. The destruction of the Jack pine, a predominant boreal species, could have social, economic and environmental impacts across Canada. Given that the pine beetle is already chewing its way through stands of hybrid lodgepole and Jack pine on the fringe of the boreal, big questions remain about how fast it will move and when it will arrive in Ontario. “We haven’t accumulated any evidence that says we should be optimistic,” warns Allan Carroll, one of the country’s foremost beetle experts.

The current scale of the mountain pine beetle invasion, as any resident of the B.C. Interior will tell you, has to be seen to be believed. To convince Albertans and other Westerners of the magnitude of the problem, 80 participants at the Calgary summit board three planes for an aerial tour of mountain pine beetle country. During the six-hour Tunnelling into the lifeblood of a tree, tiny moun- round trip from Calgary to Williams Lake, B.C., we fly over six forest tain pine beetles (ABOVE) pack a hefty punch. It can districts under various stages of attack. As John Rustad, B.C. MLA for take 10 months after the insects devour their Prince George-Omineca, later explains to the group during a salmon lodgepole meal before the trees show signs of lunch in Williams Lake: “It’s not every day you get to see a natural

THIS PAGE: KEITH DOUGLAS/ALLCANADAPHOTOS.COM; OPPOSITE:THIS PAGE: WEST TERRY A. PARKER/VIEWPOINTS sickness (OPPOSITE). disaster in slow motion.”

68 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 On board the twin-prop Dornier 328, Carroll, an insect ecologist with Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, reviews the dynamics of the disaster, explaining how 2,000 to 3,000 bugs typically swarm a tree, then kill it. “First the trees turn red. Then they shed their needles and turn grey.” From the air, the first signs of colourful die-off If vast landscapes appear just north of Kamloops, where beetles have infested 8,000 hectares. Although it prefers of mature pine loaded the gun mature lodgepole pine, the predator will dine on any pine species during an epidemic. The bugs for a beetle epidemic, climate have even been known to attack the odd spruce. The infestation looks spotty at first, but the change pulled the trigger. haphazardness soon gives way to well-demarcated attack zones illuminated by garishly red hillsides in the 100 Mile House Forest District, where the beetles have already consumed 88,000 hectares. Farther north, in the Chilcotin Forest District, red and grey vistas replace green altogether. Huge cut The mountain pine beetle is just one of several hundred highly blocks also appear in the ghostly grey forest, a sign evolved bark beetle species in the world. For thousands of years, it that crews are frantically logging “beetle wood,” played an important role in forest-fire regimes by thinning out patches which retains its commercial value for at least five of aging lodgepole forests all the way from Mexico to British Columbia. years before it rots. By routinely killing old stands, the beetle simply helped turn forests into kindling, which fuelled wildfires. Fire, in turn, forces lodgepole cones to open and release their seeds. So while the beetle aided wildfire, the fire kept forests healthy and held the beetle in check. But public policy and the forest industry changed the natural fire regime nearly a hundred years ago. Thanks to effective firefighting, the area occupied by mature pine roughly tripled. Since 1910, the number of lodgepole pine between 80 and 120 years old increased from 18 to 53 percent throughout British Columbia. “Economically, it made sense to remove fire from the landscape, but as a consequence, we grew this massive inventory of mature pine,” says Carroll. “We created a fairly substantial pine-beetle smorgasbord.”

Around Williams Lake, the whole country looks dead or dying. Pointing to an endless sea of crim- Fort St. James Burns Lake • son pines, Carroll talks about entering “the heart • Vanderhoof Prince • George of the big red blob.” By the time the plane flies • over the Cariboo and Quesnel forest districts, the BRITISH devastation resembles some total, unforgiving COLUMBIA Biblical plague. “The beetles have eaten just about Quesnel everything,” says Carroll. In Quesnel, that means • the beetles have marched through about two-thirds of 945,000 hectares of commercial pine. An Prince Rupert R • O C Albertan on board bravely asks whether anything K Y ALBERTA can be done. “A bucket will put out a campfire,” M O U says Carroll, “but not a burning house.” N TA TWEEDSMUIR IN PROV. PARK •Williams Lake S Drastic times call for drastic measures in British Volume of pine killed by Golden mountain pine beetle 100 Mile House• • Columbia, where pine beetles have devastated huge 70% to 100% swaths of pine forests (MAP). Clearcutting (RIGHT) Kamloops• 30% to 70% and burning (ABOVE) prevent beetles from spreading Cranbrook 1% to 30% • into healthy stands and create a boom for Nelson• Less than 1% Vancouver loggers, who try desperately to salvage beetle wood • Pine forest not present

THIS PAGE: GARTH LENZ/ALLCANADAPHOTOS.COM; MIDDLE:THIS PAGE: KAJ R. SVENSSON/VIEWPOINTS WEST Victoria MAP: STEVEN FICK/CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC; SOURCE: RESEARCH BRANCH, B.C. MINISTRY OF FORESTS AND RANGE before it loses its value. •

70 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 71 Computer models predict the beetles will run out of seed with a high fat content that Clark’s nutcrackers, red food in British Columbia some time around 2013, so now squirrels and grizzly bears depend on. Although its lofty everyone in the province talks about simply coping with elevations in harsh alpine niches previously kept the pine the inevitable aftermath. Speaker after speaker at the A great swarm out of reach of most pests, warming temperatures have summit talked of salvaging dead wood for log homes, allowed the cold-blooded pine beetle to invade whitebark strand board and even fuel pellets or preparing logging of beetles from British territory in Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains and cause communities for a massive bust when allowable cuts, spectacular and widespread die-offs. “We are really worried which have increased by at least 31 percent since 2001 in Columbia got caught about the hydrological ramifications downslope,” says Cook. the Interior, drop by an estimated 50 percent in the next Like many scientists, Cook believes the bark-beetle decade. In fact, many affected communities are now in 50-kilometre-per-hour attacks could change western landscapes altogether. He working on economic diversification plans that address life suspects savanna-style grasslands may replace many of after the beetle (see sidebar, page 76). winds and wound up the forests under attack in the next decade and believes the If vast landscapes of mature pine loaded the gun for a worst may not be over. beetle epidemic, climate change pulled the trigger. As temper- In recent years, beetle numbers have grown so extraor- in Alberta forests. “If you think of bark beetles as a predator of trees, they atures begin to dip in the fall, the beetles produce a natural dinarily surreal — into the trillions — that loggers have will go as far as they can in search of prey,” says Cook. antifreeze to protect them through winter. Early cold snaps found heaps of dead beetles up to 10 centimetres deep 10 million conifers in the past decade. Fire suppression, “If the temperature gets warmer, they will expand east can wipe out swarms, as one did in Quesnel in 1985, when littering lake beaches. Others relate how they can actually historic grazing patterns and drought set a delectable table, and north. It could get very bad.” the mercury dropped to -35°C on Halloween. Mid-winter hear the beetles chewing their way through a forest and authorities are now struggling to keep up with the That fear has now gripped Alberta, where the beetle has freezes of -40°C or below are another true beetle killer — an under attack. One apocryphal story records a beetle dead wood. Ski resorts, campgrounds and wilderness areas crossed the Rockies on several fronts. Although the bug increasingly rare occurrence in central British Columbia, flight so great and mighty that it showed up on an have been denuded, or soon will be. Throughout Arizona and has entered southern lodgepole forests in the past, the where average minimum temperatures over the past century airport radar screen. New Mexico, massive invasions of engraver beetles (Ips spp.) prairies have served as a barrier to any continental expansion. and piñon and five-spined ips (Ips lacontei), fuelled by extensive drought, have already The mountain pine beetle (OPPOSITE TOP) kills lodgepoles (BELOW) killed millions of fragrant piñon trees, small by choking off water and nutrient supplies. Forests near 100 Mile evergreens that provide firewood and nuts in House, B.C. (LEFT), are splashed with evidence of infestation. The MAP the desert of the southwestern United States. beetle is a threat to pine forests across North America ( ). BELOW: MAP: KAJ R. SVENSSON/VIEWPOINTS WEST; STEVEN FICK/CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC; SOURCE: LOGAN, J. A., AND A. POWELL, FOREST INSECT DISTURBANCE REGIMES.” CHANGE ALTERED “ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE Steve Cook, a forest entomologist at the University of Idaho who has studied forest pests for 27 years, says he hasn’t seen anything quite like it. “The infestations are larger, occur over a greater geographical area and are a little more intense,” he says. “The beetles just act like a slow-moving wildfire. When you don’t allow fire to do its job, bark beetles will do it for you. Mother Nature doesn’t want that amount of energy to go unused.” Cook is particularly concerned about the fate of whitebark pine forests at high moun- tain altitudes. This keystone species, or “rooftop” of the Rockies, produces a large

Peace River Dawson have jumped by nearly 3°C. While hotter summers stressed But the pine beetle and its cousins aren’t making head- Creek Grande Prairie ALBERTA out the forest, warmer winters reduced beetle-larvae mortal- lines only in British Columbia and Alberta. As harbingers ALASKA Fox Creek ity substantially. In the end, climate change has increased of climate change or drought, bark beetles have begun a full- EDMONTON optimal beetle habitat by 75 percent in the province. scale assault on forests throughout western North America. Jasper Nat. Park Red Kakwa- Jasper Deer The proverbial “perfect storm” arrived in the 1990s, The spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis), emboldened by Willmore Interprovincial Banff Nat. when climate change, fire suppression and forest policies warmer summers and milder winters, reduced its reproduc- Park Park BRITISH Banff favouring lodgepole monocultures for the global softwood tive cycle from two years to one and then exploded in south B.C. ALTA. Calgary COLUMBIA Ca trade set the beetle on its current path. Everyone expected central Alaska in the Kenai Peninsula during the 1990s. It Enlarged Jack pine nm area Kamloops ore 1 a cold snap to quiet initial outbreaks that affected 100,000 has since eaten through 30 million trees over an area 2 2⁄ times

hectares in the Prince George area, but it never came. Before the size of Prince Edward Island. During the same period, Lodgepole long, the infestation had some 22,000 epicentres in south- D. rufipennis dined its way through 340,000 hectares of pine Eastern white IDAHO ern and central British Columbia. By 2005, the beetles had mature spruce in the southwest Yukon. A territorial govern- pine consumed five times the province’s annual harvest cut. ment website calls the 15-year-long outbreak “the largest ever COLO. At the Alberta summit, Doug Routledge, a vice-presi- recorded in Canada and ... there is no end in sight.” dent of the Council of Forest Industries in British In Colorado, mountain pine beetles and armies of piñon ARIZ. N.M. Loblolly pine Columbia, admitted that the province just responded too ips (Ips confusus), western balsam bark beetles (Dryocoetes con-

TOP: ALLAN CARROLL; MIDDLE: CHRIS HARRIS/ALLCANADAPHOTOS.COM slowly to the outbreak. “We did too little too late.” fusus Swaine) and spruce beetles have destroyed more than

72 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 Trees attacked by small infestations in Banff National Park That became apparent when the Alberta government in the 1940s were felled. The beetle reinvaded southern tried to contain an outbreak in Kakwa-Willmore Alberta between 1978 and 1985, but a cold snap, combined Interprovincial Park north of Jasper. Beetle infestations had with tree felling and burning, controlled those outbreaks. been stable there since they were first detected in trees this The beetle returned to Banff in 1998. The outbreak far north in 2002, but by 2005, several fading trees were nearly eluded detection until a conservation officer acci- noticed in the area, so the government began an aggressive dentally discovered 24 red trees along a popular hiking trail felling and burning program. And since last summer, outside Canmore. A survey identified approximately 4,000 when a great swarm of beetles from British Columbia got infested trees in the area, prompting much hand-wringing. caught in 50-kilometre-per-hour winds and, about seven The eastern slopes of the Rockies, after all, harbour two hours later, wound up some 400 kilometres away in Alberta million hectares of mature lodgepole — or beetle food — forests, crews of up to 600 workers have been identifying, worth approximately $23 billion. felling and burning thousands of infested trees. Parks Canada promptly reacted with a $7 million The lessons learned have been sobering. Dave Neads, prescribed burning program. They targeted prime pine a conservation consultant and member of British Columbia’s beetle forest habitat around the Banff townsite, where fire Mountain Pine Beetle Provincial Task Force, argues that has been religiously suppressed since 1875. In the past the beetle epidemic is another reminder of the inherent four years, Parks Canada has burned nearly 50,000 hectares vulnerability of forest monocultures and the human of lodgepole pine in an attempt to give the beetle less communities dependent on them. “If you have diversity dining room. Bill Fisher, director-general for Western and in your forest, communities and economies,” he says, Northern Canada for Parks Canada, says the burns have not “you can withstand stress.” Neads believes rural commu- only deprived the beetle of a corridor but restored bird nities that respond to beetle depredations by diversifying abundance, bear density and species richness in the rapidly their economies may also be better prepared for more greening burned areas. “The problem,” he says, “is bigger biological grief. “As global climate change proceeds, than a single province and a single ecosystem.” this mountain pine beetle might be the first of many invasions,” he says. “We have entered the rapids.”

Anatomy of a murder

he mountain pine beetle is a highly evolved serial killer. TThe adult female typically attacks drought-stressed trees first, sending out pheromones to attract more beetles to the feeding frenzy. Thousands of beetles at a time can bore into the phloem, the juicy inner bark of a tree, stimulating it to produce a sticky resin. But, in many instances, the sheer number of beetles quickly overwhelms such defences. The female beetle also enlists the help of a blue-stain fungus, which it carries in its mouth and inoculates into the phloem. As the fungi colonize the sapwood, they block water and nutrient flow, allowing the beetles to eat. Each female also deposits an average of 60 eggs along the edges of long vertical galleries between the bark and sapwood. The eggs hatch within a few days and larvae grow there over winter. Larvae create tunnels perpendicular to the parent galleries, effectively girdling the tree and slowly choking off its circulation. The combined dining habits of the fungi and the legless larvae seal the tree’s fate. By midsummer, adult beetles emerge from the pupae and fly out to begin another tree-killing cycle. Attacked trees typically turn red once the beetles have left, leaving Insect ecologist Allan Carroll stares down a model of his pitch tubes on the outer bark as the only indication of nemesis (TOP). After mating, the female excavates vertical infestation. It takes about four years after a swarming for a tunnels between the bark and sapwood (ABOVE LEFT), where she lodgepole pine to lose its needles and become a grey skeleton. lays her eggs (ABOVE RIGHT). A.N. TOP: GARTH LENZ/ALLCANADAPHOTOS.COM; BOTTOM: ALLAN CARROLL

74 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 75 Since the Calgary summit, the bug has inexorably Officials in British Columbia called a similar plan a marched on despite prescribed burns and the frenzied “leading-edge attack,” which turned out to be no match work of beetle-suppression crews along the B.C.-Alberta for a leading-edge biological invasion. Scientists later border. In August, the Alberta government, which now concluded that the size and aggressive nature of the issues weekly bulletins concerning the mountain pine outbreak made the strategy ineffective. beetle, reported finding the bugs in trees throughout Peace Jesse Logan, a prominent American forester who predicted River country, including Grande Prairie and Fox Creek. as early as 2001 that climate change might give the pine They apparently fell from the sky in a great dispersion, like beetle an unprecedented uplift into the boreal forest, the 2002 Willmore invasion. “It’s an unnerving and remains awed by the implications. disturbing development,” says Carroll. “Historically, we “If invasive populations of mountain pine beetles become have never seen beetles here before.” established in Jack pine, there is contiguous host pine forest By October, Alberta officials were estimating that based across the continent all the way to the loblolly pine forests on preliminary surveys, some 1.5 million trees in the of the southeastern United States,” he wrote in a 2006 province could be infested in 2006-2007. Last year, 19,000 paper on climate change and biological invaders. “We may trees were hit, up from only 1,000 between 2002 and 2004. be on the verge of a biogeographical event of continental scale In September, the Harper government slashed $12 million with devastating economic and ecological consequences.” from the Mountain Pine Beetle Initiative, a Liberal program, The beetles are coming, and yes, there will be but is now slated to release a plan of its own, rumoured to consequences. include at least $200 million to fight the blight. Meanwhile, Alberta has released a plan to engage the bug in the forests Andrew Nikiforuk is a writer based in Calgary. northeast of Jasper National Park by cutting and burning lodgepole pine before they experience massive infestation. To comment, e-mail [email protected]. CG Visit www.canadiangeographic.ca/web/jf07.

Life after the beetle

estled in the pine forests of the British Columbia Interior, NQuesnel has been particularly hard-hit by the pine bee- tle. One-third of all jobs in the area are in the forest industry. Ironically, the beetles have triggered an economic boom in the city (pop. 10,500), says Mayor Nate Bello. But foresters are trying to keep up, felling beetle-plagued trees before the wood loses its value entirely. Because of the beetles, the annual allowable cut increased from about 2 million cubic metres a year in 2001 to roughly 5 million cubic metres in 2004. With every boom, however, there comes a bust, and Quesnel is preparing for the inevitable recession after the beetle wood has been cut. “Our city is looking at ways of increasing revenue and improving our core infrastructure,” says Bello, who is also a founder of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition, a group whose aim is to ensure the survival of communities affected by the beetle. “Everything we do is looking into the future and how we can be more sustainable.” By improving its facilities and developing new economic strategies, says Bello, Quesnel is hoping to attract newcomers, retain retirees and maintain a thriving economy in spite of the mountain pine beetle. The city is actively promoting tourist attractions, such as the gold-rush town of Barkerville — the largest historic site in the province — and the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives, which holds a rare collection of Chinese artifacts. And with oil and gas reserves just west of the city estimated to be on a par with those of Peace River, Alta., Bello says the Forestry communities such as Mackenzie, B.C. (ABOVE), have petroleum industry may provide post-beetle jobs. The city is been thriving since allowable cuts were increased. But what also looking to increase ranching and locally grown produce. will happen when the beetles move on? Annapurni Narayanan GARTH LENZ/ALLCANADAPHOTOS.COM

76 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 77