Hiway16 Magazine... about people and places in north-central British Columbia, Canada

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Beetlemania in the Bulkley

by Debi Osborne

Mountain pine beetles, spruce beetles, douglas-fir and balsam beetles. People in the Bulkley Valley always seem to be discussing bugs.

To me, they are just "bark beetles" which means they burrow beneath the bark of live trees, lay their eggs and kill their host. How does this affect people like me? And why is it such big news?

The Mountain Pine Beetle
(all photos courtesy of the Forest Service staff, Morice District)

When the papers began to spout "No Hope For Tweedsmuir Park" and use words like "Epidemic" and "Beetle Battle $3.4 billion," I figured it was time to take a look. What I found was quite distressing. It does end with a moderately hopeful outcome, but in order to understand any of it, I had to start at the beginning.

I learned about the different species of beetles and why they have been able to reach catastrophic numbers in such a short time. I visited the Ministry of Forests office in Houston to find out what measures were being taken to deal with the bugs, which lead me to researching how this affects the mills, the small contractors, the independent logging truck operators, the retailers, the consumers and the odd ignorant writer.

Pine trees turn red, one year after being killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle

"IN THE BEGINNING...", was the balance of all things in Mother Nature's world. When humans began to control the rate and devastation of natural forest fires, this left an unusually high amount of mature timber. Like humans, older trees weaken with age. Their natural defence of drowning predators in pitch (called pitch out) begins to dry up and they become increasingly susceptible to even 4mm-sized pests, like beetles.

You can tell a pine tree has been attacked when numerous white globs of pitch "tubes" dot it's bark. When the pitch turns a ruddy color, it means the tree has lost the battle and will soon become nothing more than a dead nursery for wintering larvae.






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