Mountain pine beetles have killed off huge tracts of forest in central British Columbia and are looking for new food. Could Alberta’s pine forests be next?
According to forest health officer Mike Maximchuk, they could.
Maximchuk, with Sustainable Resource Development in Peace River, told a Slave Lake audience last week that eight billion trees have been killed by in B.C. That’s about 10 million hectares of forest, or $18 billion worth of wood. Having chewed up a portion of B.C. the pernicious critters are migrating westward – and doing it further north than ever before.
“They reached Dawson Creek (area) last year,” he told the Slave Lake Forest Public Advisory Committee. We’ve never seen beetles east of the Rockies that far north.”
Maximchuk said that when a pine beetle infestation reaches a certain level, the insects abandon their slow, steady migration patterns and adopt a new strategy. It involves flying up and catching the prevailing wind to wherever it takes them. Thus, an infestation in southeastern B.C. back in the 1970s resulted in the beetle crossing the Rockies to create an outbreak in the eastern slopes. They also showed up far out on the prairies, apparently blown there by the wind.
As a rule, the weather east of the mountains is not friendly to pine beetles. But with the warmer winters we’ve been having, the threat increases.
Pine beetles spread when the females go looking for stressed pine trees. They burrow under the bark and if they like what they find they give off pheromones attracting males. After they do their business they’ll lay eggs in the sawdust they’ve created. The eggs hatch and the larvae start chewing horizontally around the tree. In many cases the tree will die and turn red the next summer. Patches of red trees is one way pine beetle presence is located.
Another method is by pheromone baiting. Maximchuk has been hanging bags of scent on trees southeast of Grande Prairie. In a couple of cases they’ve attracted mountain pine beetles.
Tactics for controlling outbreaks vary from cutting and burning individual trees to logging large areas to control burning. Both logging and burning are being used in the mountain parks, he said.
Another issue in preventing the spread of the beetle into Alberta is the transportation of wood. As in the case of Dutch elm disease, carrying wood with the bark on into a clean area can be deadly. Don’t under any circumstances bring any back from B.C., Maximchuk said.
“There’s always someone who does though,” he said.

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