Thanks for posting, Chris. I was in British
Columbia in June and saw plenty of ugly black stands of dead pine.
Ed
> This is for those who think that increased CO2 is good because it makes
> plants grow faster...
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> <<Unless there is a severe winter cold snap, all recently attacked trees
> will have to be logged or burned before the beetles fly again. In many
> cases, such work will require crews going into forests that are not
> commercially viable to get rid of the infested trees. Work crews will
> also have to identify all newly attacked trees and get rid of them too.
> The heartening thing is that in parts of BC where the outbreak is not
> too intense, such efforts have worked. And they could again, if the
> will is there.>>
>
>
> Canada's looming forestry crisis
>
> By BEN PARFITT
>
> People rarely get excited about bugs, except in summertime when mosquitoes
> swarm and thoughts turn to West Nile Virus.
> But there is plenty to get excited about when considering a certain beetle
> now overrunning British Columbia's forests, a bug that is on a frightening
> flight path toward Canada's cross-country, northern boreal forest.
> The economic and ecological implications of the mountain pine beetle's foray
> into the boreal would be staggering. Hundreds of millions of trees killed.
> Valley after valley carpeted in spires of dead and deteriorating pine. And
> one of Canada's most important industries -- one with exports of $40 billion
> in 2003-2004 -- facing a looming shortage of trees.
> Two years ago, Canadian Forest Service scientists noticed telltale signs
> that the beetles had leapt the formidable northern Rocky Mountains to land
> near Chetwynd, BC. There, the needles of thousands of pines were now a rusty
> red, meaning the beetles had bored into and killed the trees a year earlier.
> It was the clearest signal yet that the beetles were on the doorstep of the
> boreal, with only a few hundred kilometres more to go before being firmly
> ensconced there.
> As a beetle infestation of biblical proportions continues rolling through BC
> threatening the economic livelihood of dozens of communities, it is worth
> asking whether everything is being done to prevent a similar calamity
> further to the east.
> In the politics-as-soap-opera environment that is Ottawa, it is no real
> surprise that a federal government decision in March to give BC $100 million
> to fight the mountain pine beetle barely registered in the national media.
> Yet how those funds are spent could effectively blunt the attack in one
> critical area where the beetles have made a troubling appearance.
> In much of BC, stopping the beetles would be about as easy as a beach bum
> sucking up an incoming wave with a straw. So intense is the infestation
> around communities like Quesnel and Prince George that the once green forest
> is a sea of red. But around Chetwynd, where the beetles have never before
> been, things are different. They are isolated and still relatively small in
> number.
> Getting rid of them, however, is another matter. Unless there is a severe
> winter cold snap, all recently attacked trees will have to be logged or
> burned before the beetles fly again. In many cases, such work will require
> crews going into forests that are not commercially viable to get rid of the
> infested trees. Work crews will also have to identify all newly attacked
> trees and get rid of them too. The heartening thing is that in parts of BC
> where the outbreak is not too intense, such efforts have worked. And they
> could again, if the will is there.
> Curiously, Ottawa's announcement spoke not a word about keeping the beetles
> out of the boreal. Yet given the stakes involved, this is precisely what
> most if not all of that $100 million should be spent on.
> The other thing not mentioned by Ottawa, nor BC for that matter, is that
> today's beetle numbers are out of control for reasons that pose huge
> challenges for Canada. First, more and more beetles are doing damage because
> global warming is making the environment more to their liking, allowing them
> to expand their range. Second, thanks to our fire-fighting efforts there are
> now many far more older pine trees on the landscape than there were a
> century ago. Ironically, by "saving" forests from fires, we're sentencing
> them to destruction by other means.
> Somehow in the midst of all of this a new course must be charted. The
> beetles threatening Canada's boreal forest thrive in situations where
> landscapes are much the same. By rejecting monocultures and striving to make
> our forests more of a patchwork quilt of wildly diverse ages and species, we
> can make them a whole lot less susceptible to the kinds of devastating
> outbreaks now underway.
> A more hopeful plan would see us embracing diversity at every turn in the
> years ahead. The biggest and most important tools at our disposal in that
> work are logging, deliberately set and carefully controlled fires, and
> planting the right trees in the right places, with an aim to ensuring that
> we enhance biological diversity at every turn.
> The industry that benefits from logging has a role to play in that work. But
> given the enormity of the challenges ahead, public reforestation funds are
> also needed. In BC, the province needs at a minimum to start investing about
> $120 million per year in reforestation and forest restoration efforts. Once
> it does, it will be in a lot better position to turn to Ottawa for further
> help.
> With the beetles poised for a cross-Canada sweep, bold and creative
> responses are required. Anything less, puts our national boreal forest at
> grave risk.
> Ben Parfitt is the resource policy analyst with the BC Office of the
> Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of Battling the Beetle:
> Taking Action to Restore British Columbia's Interior Forests, a new CCPA
> report available on-line at: http://www.policyalternatives.ca.
>
> --
> Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
> 410-75 Albert Street, Ottawa ON K1P 5E7
> tel: 613-563-1341 fax: 613-233-1458
> http://www.policyalternatives.ca
>
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
> "igve".
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Futurework mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
