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New survey shows pesky bug staying at bay

Aug 5, 2014 | 12:03 PM

The Government of Saskatchewan has been working closely with the Government of Alberta to stop the spread of a nasty little beetle that is wreaking havoc on Canada’s lodge pole pine trees.

The mountain pine beetle (MPB), a natural enemy of the lodge pole pine, has devastated more than 18 million hectares of the tree species in B.C. already.

The pesky bug is now moving its way through Alberta and into Saskatchewan.

Dr. Rory McIntosh, a provincial forest entomologist and pathologist for the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, said they just completed a spring MPB population survey that was being done in Alberta.

“They conducted [the population survey] at 100 sites during May and June of this year. In that survey they’ve assessed just over 560 trees across that province.”

A reason for the survey was to check populations following the winter months.

Although the wind chill was quite cold this year, McIntosh said it wasn’t cold enough to have a real effect on the MPB.

“The beetle survival was similar this winter compared to previous winters. The results showed the beetles have over-wintered successfully over much of the range,” he said.

He said it has to be minus 40 C constantly for a number of days to have any effect on the MPB.

During the spring survey samples of trees are taken. “What they do is they go to these trees and take sample discs out. Then they count the number of beetles surviving so it’s an actual count of beetles. So they’ve surveyed over 560 trees throughout the range in Alberta.”

McIntosh said the results of the survey are showing that the number of beetles have stayed about the same over the past year.

“There are some areas that are a little lower than last year and some are pretty much the same. Essentially they don’t anticipate that populations are going to decline naturally in the foreseeable future.”

He said a sustained and aggressive control action is really the only current option to mitigate the environmental and economic impacts that are occurring in Alberta and to reduce the risk of the beetle continuing to migrate into Saskatchewan.

The surveys are done as part of Alberta’s routine management program.

“When you’re actually working on control action these are things that help in the planning, assessment and prioritization of activities,” he said.

McIntosh added Saskatchewan is actually ahead of the game because the province has the advantage of not having any MPB in the northern boreal forest.

“[Saskatchewan] is more in a situation where we’re detecting; we’re looking for early detection, so we can respond rapidly. If beetles should get established in the province we would then continue on with those kinds of measurements to help us in the long term planning in management actions,” he said.

Cypress Hills is still the only area in Saskatchewan where the beetles are found and McIntosh said they are actively managing the beetle there.

“What we’re doing is [finding] them early; you detect them as early as you can. You go in and you delineate the area that is infested by the beetle and you remove by fall and burn those trees and take those beetles out of the population.”

He said fighting the beetle is like fighting a fire; you have to attack it at the leading edge, which right now is in Alberta.

“What [Saskatchewan] is doing is we’re getting those ‘spot fires’ ahead of the ‘fires’ … little pockets of beetles that have dispersed a head of the main block of beetles and starting to get a foot hold in forests.”

The MPB is also trying to jump species of trees to jack pine trees, and McIntosh said they are trying to adapt to the new habitat.

“They are not doing well, current research on the front line is showing these beetles failed attacks … along the leading edge. There’s an opportunity now to control those to make sure that those beetle populations don’t become established.”

He said Saskatchewan’s plan of attack is to attack the MBP in Alberta.

“If we can prevent it getting here and we can assist [Alberta] and prevent it ever getting here, that is going to be by far the best, most economical and most efficient way of slowing the spread of the beetle east.”

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow