Alberta Foresters Crossing Fingers That Cold Winter Will Help Battle Invading Pine Beetle

[hatrack]

GRANDE CACHE - Two years after a windstorm rained mountain pine beetles on northern Alberta, fighters of the pest are pinning their hopes on another whim of weather -- a couple of particularly long and frigid cold snaps last winter. "We're cautiously optimistic that the winter did give us a helping hand," said Erica Lee, a provincial mountain pine beetle prevention specialist.

Deep in the rugged Willmore Wilderness Park hugging the British Columbia border, provincial crews on Thursday sawed out four puck-sized disks from select trees in the dense lodgepole pine forest. They marked and bagged the samples to take to a lab where they will be peeled apart for signs of living larvae that may have spent the winter under the bark.

At 299 other sites across the province, researchers are also taking stock to test the prediction that temperatures were low enough for long enough -- 12 consecutive hours of -40 C ambient air temperature -- in January and February to kill enough of the beetles to make a difference.

The two-week survey started on May 15. The results of the beetle count will give researchers an idea of what the population will be for the summer and next year and where to press the fight. "Every spring, we wait with bated breath for the results of the population forecast survey to see if we got any help from Mother Nature," Lee said.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=26358492-e219-4d9d-aa9d-1215fc667ebb

[Bob Dobbs]

1. Because of global warming this beetle is destroying Colorado's pines.

The devastation of the once beautiful mountain forests is horrifying. In the next decade all the lodgepole pines in Colorado will be dead and will create an environmental disaster.