I decided to consult an expert on the subject of the massive pine beetle outbreak in the west(I asked my sister who's worked in the field for several decades, her husband is also a forest-engineer, so is our dad, my brother has also been a forester with BC Forests for more than two decades, so I've heard more on this subject than I ever wanted to.)
Well how about that! For your information I have spent more than 44 years working in the forest industry of BC, first for the BC Forest Service and later in industry. I do know what I'm talking about here.
First off the pine beetle is indigenous to BC, it wasn't introduced and it didn't move up from the south. Quite possibly the beetle has been here as long as the pine.
Scientists say 60 million years.
Some of the first outbreaks were noticed in Manning park in the south of the province as early as the 1950s. They were a result of a combination of fire suppression, conservation and warmer climatic conditions creating a beneficial environment for the beetles' spread.
The major historical control on beetle populations inthe west has been climatic, not food supply. They simply would not have been able to survive 25 years ago in many of the stands they have successfully infested in the last two decades.
Nonsense. Manning Park never ever gets as cold as it does even now up in Tweedsmuir where the current infestation began, never did, never will, so if cold is the control, the pine in Manning Park would have been wiped out long before the park was established. Think man! Besides which large outbreaks were known to occur in the northern half of the province long before the '50's.
Basically what it comes down and what I've been saying all along, until the climate changed the major control on the beetle population in the west was climatic- longer colder winters that kept the beetle in a natural equilibrium with the pine forests. They were pretty much restricted to mature pine stands and even there their numbers were kept in check.
Well the last sentence is true at least. The real difference is there was so much more mature pine the last few decades that it was just a matter of time until an unstoppable outbreak occured. By the way, do you know at what age a lodgepole pine is considered mature? 80 years. It doesn't take many decades for an immature forest to become mature and then overmature when the lifespan of the tree is relatively short.
Human activity- fire suppression and conservation- has contributed to the vast outbreak of pine beetle in the west, but the primary cause, is the changing climate which has allowed the beetle to utilize most of the food and territory available, not just the mature stands.
Nope, wrong again. The reason the beetle goes after mature trees is because the young ones can defend themselves. When the beetle bores into them, their sap flow pushes the beetle out. But like humans, when a tree gets old its metabolism slows down, and the older the tree, the less sap flow there is and the more vulnerable is the tree to beetles. It's only when the beetles reach overwhelming numbers due to the large number of overmature trees available that they young trees succumb. And even then, those under 25 years will mostly survive an attack. You can drive through the forests around here and see all the clearcut blocks that have been planted to pine are green oasies in the middle of the dead mature forest.
Once again, until the climatic controls were removed due to CLIMATE CHANGE, most of the vast stands of pine in the west were inaccessable to the pine beetle.
You keep saying that over and over. What do you figure, you say it often enough it will become true?
In addition to being a flashing red light the pine beetle outbreak in BC is a screaming siren to anyone who cares to listen.
I'm sure that 10 or 20 years from now some people are going to be claiming it's the lack of seals that has resulted in the disappearance the polar bear, such thinking is refered to as "not being able to see the forest for the trees" IIRC... most of the trees in this case being standing red or grey(dead).
Since the polar bear has been in a population explosion for the last 50 years or so it's unlikely they'll disappear in 20 years.
