Mountain Pine Beetles in the Press

Michael Milstein

The Oregonian

October 31, 2001

Foresters have spent millions of dollars through the decades battling bugs that feast on trees, but a new report by an Oregon State University researcher concludes that it may be better for the forests to simply let the insects be.

Some trees respond to bug infestations by growing faster than they wouldotherwise, says the report published in the fall issue of Conservation Biology in Practice. Insects are also nature's way of weeding out forests. They reduce crowding and competition among trees so the survivors can better withstand fires and bug attacks in the long run.

"There is now evidence that in many cases forests are more healthy after an insect outbreak," said Timothy Schowalter, the report's lead author and interim head of entomology at OSU. "The traditional view still is that forest insects are destructive, but we need a revolution in this way of thinking."

Firefighting and spraying of native forest insects such as tussock moths or pine beetles have left many Western forests so jampacked with trees that regions such as Eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains are primed for unusually severe fires or infestations, he said.

"The fact is we will never resolve our problems with catastrophic fires or insect epidemics until we restore forest health, and in this battle insects may well be our ally, not our enemy," Schowalter said.

1975 findings Such thinking is not entirely new. Two U.S. Forest Service scientists wrote in 1975 that caterpillar "grazing" of leaves harmed trees in some years but helped them in others. Caterpillars typically attacked sickly trees first, leaving healthier and more resilient trees to flourish.

But most forest managers have continued an "us against them" approach to pest control, Schowalter said. They consider insects "unconditionally threatening forces" and show little regard for the long-term good they can do, he said.

Indeed, the world of insect science -- entomology -- breaks into two camps: those, such as Schowalter, who argue for the longer view that bugs benefit forests over time, and others who think that managers must control bugs to protect forests.

Each camp overlaps slightly with the other. Both see insects as a natural force, but they differ over how freely that force should function.

"It's true, they are an integral part of forest ecosystems, but the ecosystems are very different from the way they used to be, in that there are millions of people living here now," said Darrell Ross, a forest entomologist at Oregon State. "The hands-off approach is not so viable in this day and age."

By controlling major insect outbreaks, he said, foresters can prevent huge die-offs of timber that could fuel severe wildfires.

Schowalter agrees that insects cannot always be left to their own devices. In flammable, overgrown forests, prescribed burning and thinning can work -- perhaps in concert with insects -- to reduce fire hazards near homes.

Bugs and profits Likewise, landowners planning to harvest trees in a few years cannot afford to let bugs chew up their profit margin. But if the owner does not plan to log the trees for a few decades, bugs may do little harm. A few trees may be lost to insects, he said, but in several years the remaining trees probably will make up for that.

Studies have found that the more needles tussock moths strip off a Douglas fir, for example, the faster the tree grows afterward, perhaps to compensate for the setback. Other studies showed that Western forests produced as much or more wood 10 to 15 years after mountain pine beetle outbreaks than they had before.

Such growth may rise from the complex interplay between insects and forests.

Insects do not simply gnaw on trees. They also drive decomposition that naturally enriches the soil while aerating the earth with their burrows, Schowalter's report says. They also provide food for key wildlife, carry seeds through the forest and pollinate plants in a way that controls where plants and trees grow.

In fact, bugs are often a signature of a healthy forest.

Instead of spraying bugs, Schowalter said, forest managers should try to re-create the diverse and open forests that insects themselves would normally help craft. That means thinning and breaking up dense, uniform forests that otherwise resemble an unending buffet for insects.

Susceptible forests The more diverse a forest and the more widely spaced its trees, the less prone it will be to insects and fire. Many insects will not spread as quickly through open stands common to the arid interior West. And if a stand holds a few different species of trees, it's more likely that some of the species will survive an insect outbreak.

"If we get forests back to a healthy state, we'd have to spend less money to control fires," Schowalter said. "We could also expect that insect outbreaks won't be as severe, so we will have less expense to deal with them."

For more on the Schowalter Study go to schowalter_study.html

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By Cheri Hanson and Emily Yearwood
with files from Canadian Press

Vancouver Sun

July 10, 2001

Cutting infested areas will only set table for much more massive plague in future

Pine beetle is in sixth year of perhaps an eight-year cycle in B.C. Taking a warlike approach to the worst pine beetle plague in Canadian history won't solve the epidemic, a panel of forestry experts said Tuesday. Drastically increasing cutting levels in infested areas could worsen the devastation of future infestations, said Ray Travers, a Victoria-based forestry consultant. “Frankly, we're setting it for a much larger problem 50 or 60 years from now,” Travers said at a Vancouver news conference Tuesday organized by the David Suzuki Foundation. Large-scale logging will create a new forest of similar-aged trees, which makes them highly susceptible to beetle infestations, he said.

At last count, a timber area twice the size of Vancouver Island -- worth roughly $4.2 billion -- is infested with the bugs, which chew through the bark of lodgepole pine trees and lay eggs. The hardest-hit areas of the northern Interior have been likened to a sea of red, since the trees change colour once they have been attacked. They eventually dry and die. Premier Gordon Campbell has already said a “significant increase in cutting in some parts of the [affected] area” is very likely. Campbell made the comment last month while announcing a government panel would aggressively look for a solution to the outbreak. The same day, chief B.C. forester Larry Pedersen announced a nearly 50-per-cent increase in the allowable cut for the Quesnel area.

“There is a reason to remove some trees, but not all,” said Arthur Partridge, an American forestry professor at the presentation by the Suzuki Foundation, which opposes clearcut logging. Travers and Partridge also argued that pine mountain beetle outbreaks can serve an ecological function, since forest species can use the dried trees for habitat.

The foundation is also advocating thinning of the pine stand, which makes it more difficult for beetles to thrive.

A third strategy would be to stage prescribed burns, which mimic natural fires that destroy the beetles and open lodgepole pine cones so they can repopulate fallen areas.

Finally, a diversity of species and tree ages must be maintained through both planting and cutting, to ensure the entire forest isn't wiped out by a species or age-specific infestation.

Ronnie Drever, a forestry researcher and biologist with the Suzuki Foundation, said a combination of the proposed solutions would likely have the greatest success. The approach is “ecosystem-based,” he said, in which natural methods ensure the viability of forests into the future and beyond isolated outbreaks.

Although the infestation covers an extremely large area, researchers believe it is cresting, and will soon begin to slow. Past infestations in B.C. and the western U.S. have normally lasted between three and eight years, and the current infestation is about six years old, Drever said.

Pedersen, who is responsible for setting allowable cut numbers for B.C. regions, said he agrees with the foundation's suggestions in principle. “They've put their finger on the very issues we've struggled with and we agree we need to take a high degree of care in dealing with the beetles,” he said. “They talk about a lot of strategies I would say apply in the future but they don't apply in the middle of a very large-scale epidemic on a vast area of the land base where significant forest values are at risk.”

As many as 50 small communities and 25,000 workers are vulnerable to economic instability caused by the outbreak, Pedersen said. Although he acknowledged the high dollar value of the infested stand, Drever said “there's a tradeoff between the value that can be gained now and what will be available in the future.” Ultimately, the foundation believes a scientific assessment needs to be part of Campbell's task force, he said. “We feel there's a dominancy of the social and economic criteria that are driving the practices, and we would like to see the management plan based more fundamentally on the ecology of the system,” said Drever.

The B.C. Forest Service is using a combined approach of clear cuts, spot logging and trapping methods to combat beetle spread, said Pedersen, who is considering lifting the cut limit in the Burns Lake area. It is unlikely all the infested trees will be logged, said John McLean, a forestry professor at UBC. “Some of the infested material will never be handled either for economic reasons or because it's not worth getting into it and it'll go through natural succession” McLean did not echo the Suzuki foundation in opposing increased cuts. “That's socially irresponsible,” he said. “If you have a lot of dead wood, take that into the mills and make that the diet the mills should be working on. Leave the healthy stands for the future.”

Experts believe a series of hot summers and mild winters has allowed beetle numbers to climb drastically.

Elsewhere in Canada, an outbreak of brown spruce longhorn beetles has ravaged trees in the Halifax area. The bug is not yet considered a problem but last summer, loggers cut down about 10,000 infested trees in the Maritimes' largest city parks.

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By Edo Nyland
Retired Chief Forester of the Yukon Territory

Victoria Times-Colonist

July 3, 2001

When in 1840 the strike anywhere match came onto the market, the new invention soon became standard equipment for the wave of prospectors that fanned out over B.C. and the Yukon, looking for mineral riches.

Most of the province was covered in white spruce and interior Douglas fir, with lodgepole pine scattered in between. The prospectors needed to see the rocks, so they burned the forest and the organic layer when the weather was right.

The new match was a wonderful tool and was used frequently and everywhere. In a short time, it also provided the much needed dry wood to keep warm in the winter. But fires have a habit of growing and many millions of acres were burned needlessly, but who cared ( except, as the prospectors put it, the local natives, and they had legs to run away)?

The practice also gave the much unexpected benefit of a much reduced mosquito problem and many areas were set on fire just for this purpose. From the Cariboo gold rush on, the forests of B.C. were devastated.

Pioneer species like lodgepole pine and aspen took advantage of the new opportunity and always recovered the denuded ground, but the soil needed much longer. The pioneer pine and aspen were a blessing for our province because otherwise burned areas would have been bare.

In 1896 the Yukon gold rush started and the permafrost had to be melted to get at the placer gold. Until the early 1950's the Yukon government issued fire permits to set the forests along the Stewart and Yukon rivers on fire to supply the needed dry fuel wood for the many river boats.

The southern and central Yukon went up in flames, converting the predominantly spruce forests into pine forests. But only the smaller trees were utilized. The new match had been the instrument of destruction for the forests of all of B.C. and the Yukon.

The main problem is that pines are loaded with many different turpines, which make up the turpentine and resins in the wood and the needles. They are designed to be burned to scatter their seeds, once the fire has opened the cones, and burn they did, so fire followed fire followed fire.

But nature is indominitable and wants to heal. In wet or portected places, clumps of spruce here and there had managed to survive the 150 year carnage and the wind distributed their millions of seeds far and wide. In time, almost everywhere the spruce trees came back as an understory, growing in the partial shade of the pines and apsens. The pioneer overstory, covering these enormous areas, is now growing old and decadent, but the are now enormously valuable for the future health of the forest.

Over the decades their wood stored up masses of organic matter and nutrients now desperately needed by the developing crop of spruce, growing up underneath. So nature engaged the mountain pine beetle to convert the short-lived trees into something the climax white spruce and Interior Douglas fir could utilize. They open up the tree canopy and thereby restore normality to the land.

So the beetle went to work, doing its assigned task and in the process coloured the fast-aging pine forests a pretty red, making the stored-up nutrients again available and enriching the soil. No harm is being done anywhere, just nature doing its healing work.

But some people see it differently and want to salvage the wood. If their logging machines walk over the young spruce trees , the climax crop, who cares? They have no commercial value.

Wake up B.C. There is no waste involved in leaving the trees standing, just many benefits for those as yet unborn.

Edo Nyland lives in Sidney

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Tom Anderson

Vancouver Sun

July 02, 2001

Does no one have anything good to say about the mountain pine beetle

(Premier launches fight on pine beetle 'disaster', June 26)?

The logging companies want us to believe that this busy little bug is a threat to our forests. In fact, the only real threat is to company profits. The pine beetle is actually doing us a big favour. It's working hard to ensure that we have healthy forests in the future. The pine beetle's job is to accelerate the transfer of energy from sun to soil when a forest is under stress.

In a forest of mature lodgepole, stress is usually a result of insufficient moisture, which is most often related to drought. Beetle populations have exploded because we are experiencing drought conditions that reach all the way to Brazil.

The worst possible response to a beetle infestation is “harvesting” trees. This opens the forest to more sunlight, increasing temperatures and further drying out the land. It also robs the soil of nutrients needed for healthy regrowth. As we've seen elsewhere, this can turn forest land into desert.

Logging requires roads that interfere with natural drainage. This puts further stress on the forest, causing more trees to be attacked by pine beetles. Once again, companies get the benefits while beetles get the blame.

Tom Anderson Summerland

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Larry Pynn

The Vancouver Sun

July 02, 2001

The B.C. forest industry must shoulder part of the blame for an outbreak of mountain pine beetle in the Chilcotin because it engages in clearcutting over pro-active harvesting techniques such as thinning, a forestry consultant says.

Herb Hammond of Silva Ecosystem Consultants in the West Kootenay said in an interview that numerous studies over the past 20 years prove that thinning out infected trees can reduce the spread of pine beetle in lodgepole pine forests.

“It's a way to get ahead of the beetle, to beetle-proof stands, as opposed to using the beetle as an excuse to clearcut. They haven't been willing to listen to that despite the pile of scientific literature to support that approach.”

Hammond urged the government to delay simplistic actions such as massive clearcutting to solve the pine beetle problem and to seek alternative solutions from foresters and experts outside of government and industry.

“It's rushing into it too fast,” said Hammond, who has worked on pine beetle in the Chilcotin for 15 years. “I get inherently suspicious when it's presented in such a simplistic fashion. There's a lot of hysteria and glittering generalities about epidemics and ‘everything's about to burn up’ and ‘all the trees are dead.’ ”

B.C. chief forester Larry Pedersen announced last week an increase of almost 50 per cent in the amount of wood the forest industry can cut in the Quesnel timber-supply area.

Rick Smith, operations manager for the Vernon forest district, said his office has been practising single-tree selection since the early 1980s, taking out the infected trees to combat the spread of the pine beetle.

“We feel it's been quite effective in most of our district, primarily where you get into a pine-beetle infestation in the early stages,” he said.

Older forests in the northwest section of the district, though, are being heavily affected by the pine beetle, perhaps because drought conditions several years ago stressed older trees. He added that single-tree selection is only a short-term solution since lodgepole pine requires more sunlight than allowed under the technique to regenerate.

Hammond said thinning infected trees in strategic locations across the landscape makes the forest less attractive for beetle reproduction by increasing the heat and light in the stands, and reducing humidity.

Thinning also sends the pheromones of the beetle up through the canopy rather than horizontally, further reducing breeding success and the potential for the beetles to spread across the landscape.

One U.S. study of pine stands aged 76 to 102 years old found that over four years, the untouched stands sustained losses of 73 to 93 per cent compared with losses of four to 39 per cent in the thinned stands.

The study concluded: “When faced with an impending pine beetle epidemic, inclusion of partial cuts in the over-all strategy appears to be a reasonable alternative to wide-scale regeneration harvests [clearcuts] or extensive beetle-caused mortality.”

John Borden, professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University, said thinning is a valid option, but can be expensive, can leave the forest open to wind damage, and can reduce forest productivity by lowering tree density.

“It's a good tactic for watersheds, recreation areas, campsites,” said Borden, who receives about $65,000 a year in research funding from 18 timber companies in B.C. and two in Alberta.

Hammond also said it's ridiculous for industry to pin all the blame on the latest beetle problem to the failure of B.C. Parks to burn infected timber in Tweedsmuir provincial park several years ago.

“That's just not on,” he said. “It's not like . . . industry has been successfully doing away with the beetle everywhere else. The rhetoric is simplistic and not very well substantiated.”

Last Updated: Saturday 30 June 2001 OPINION

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Editorial

Vancouver Sun

June 30, 2001

In any battle between man and insect, the smart money's always on the bugs. That understanding should inform the province's planned war against the mountain pine beetle infestation that threatens millions of trees across the Interior.

Premier Gordon Campbell made the war a personal crusade this week, travelling to Prince George to promise action. But despite years of study, action on what he calls a crisis was put off until yet another consultant's report is ready by August.

In this case, the delay is wise. The consultant is charged with developing a business case for any effort to combat the beetle and a detailed project plan. Both should get close scrutiny before a costly and risky program is approved.

It's difficult and often futile to fight nature. Across North America the pine beetle and its relatives are part of the forest environment, with populations rising when the conditions are right and falling when they've eaten their way through too many trees.

B.C. is now going through the worst outbreak in history, stretching over an area twice the size of Vancouver Island. Less than 10 per cent of the area's actually affected, but the infected timber could be worth more than $4 billion -- if it was ever harvested.

The beetles find a ready home in over-mature, stressed lodgepole pine. They lay eggs beneath the bark, burrowing deep and often killing the trees. Each spring they move on, spreading the infestation. The best natural control is a cold winter.

But conditions in B.C. have been perfect for a beetle plague. Warm winters have allowed high survival rates, and years of forest fire management have created a surfeit of over-mature lodgepole pine forests. So the beetles are able to thrive and spread far more rapidly than ever before.

This creates massive problems, real and potential. A landscape of dead trees is bad enough, and it's a perfect place for a devastating wildfire. And trees lost to the beetles will take decades to regenerate -- a dreadful economic blow to forest companies and communities.

The problems are real. But that doesn't mean the government should grasp at just any solution.

Traditionally the approach has been to harvest wood quickly in the infected areas, hoping both to realize its value and to slow the beetles' spread. Once the bark is stripped at the mill, the beetles die.

That kind of rushed logging -- cutting where the beetle has struck, rather than where it makes sense to go next -- is costly. The provincial government tries to compensate by reducing stumpage dramatically to reflect the higher costs and the reduced value of the wood.

Other tools -- poisons or use of natural hormones to attract beetles to smaller areas that can then be logged -- are also costly and don't work well.

Right now an aggressive logging program would carry other risks. Lumber prices are already low, and a rush of additional wood into the market will make things worse. Cutting the trees and holding them won't solve the problem; the beetles could survive under the bark and then move on to a new host.

And American lumber producers are watching closely, prepared to argue that the token stumpage charged on beetle-infested wood represents a significant subsidy to Canadian producers. Without any softwood lumber agreement, the Americans can be expected to argue for duties and export limits.

It'll be a strong argument. Many American producers face the same threats. But because much of their land is privately held, American companies get only limited government aid. Their principal weapon is good management, harvesting mature tress and thinning forests to ensure a mix of age and size, reducing the desirable hosts for beetles.

The B.C. government owns the trees and, like any other owner, it has an obligation to ensure that any money spent is a sound investment.

So the delay in this case is prudent. Taxpayers have a right to a clear plan, with realistic estimates of the costs, the benefits and the likely effectiveness, before government decides it can undo a forest ecology that has developed over the last 100 years.

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John Foster

The problem for the forest industry is that a delay is very costly. If the beetle attacked lodgepole pine is not harvested within 2 years, then the wood checks. The checking makes the wood useless for lumber. It is impractical to conceive of logging and milling this much dead timber....

The benefits for the environment from a delay is enormous. If the lodgepole pine is all but completely harvested, then the only insect susceptible wood left will be the mature spruce. Because there would no longer be enough pine bark beetles for endemic populations of insectivorous birds after nearly complete salvage of the pine, the spruce bark beetle will then be able to ravage unchecked the remaining old spruce forests in the central interior.

Then we as a province will be following in the footsteps the example of New Brunswick which has been spraying aerial appliacations of insecticides now for over thirty years to 'protect' it's forests from the eastern spruce budworm. Incidentally there is a large infestation of western spruce budworm brewing in the Clearwater Forest District in the mature alpine fir forests....

We may be staring in the ‘face’ the beginning of ecological collapse in BC as a result of the planned liquidation of mature and old forests coupled with significant climate change....we have lost our salmon fisheries in the south, we have lost clean drinking water....we have lost significant populations of wildlife....

Some of the reports by FRBC indicated that the restoration of watersheds in the Thompson were beyond ‘repair’ or ‘restoration’. These episodes are earlier warning indicators of much change that will come in the near future....

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