It was a light hearted look at some very serious issues.
Andrew Nikiforuk, journalist and author, along with author Charlotte Gill, arrived Burns Lake last week as part of a double book launch tour. Both have written books about separate issues concerning forestry.
Two years of research on beetles went into Nikiforuk’s book, ‘Empire of the Beetle.’
Drawing on first hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters and rural residents in Canada and the U.S., Nikiforuk dug into the history of bark beetles.
It was during 2006 that his interest in beetles grew. Nikiforuk said he flew over B.C. and was struck by the sea of red needles below. He was intrigued by what he saw, although at the time he said he did not understand most of what was happening to B.C.’s forests. “It was a changed landscape,” he said.
As a Southern Albertan land owner, and wanting to find out more about the mountain pine beetle epidemic sweeping across B.C., he began his research.
“The mountain pine beetle is a formidable insect, my favourite description I have heard so far is that it has the head of Darth Vader … but if you look at it closely, it is really shaped like a bullet. For hundreds of years, loggers and beetle fanatics have wondered how an insect as diminutive as a grain of rice could overwhelm something as formidable and long living as a tree, let alone millions of trees.”
Nikiforuk said that for 30 million years species of bark beetles, like the mountain pine beetle, have co-evolved with trees. “Beetles are the original tree surgeons, tree pruners and foresters and none of them have a Ph.D. Beetles have a duty to take out the unthrifty trees in the forest …. they are professional predators and swarm their prey in highly coordinated attacks, like a pack of wolves.”
According to Nikiforuk, a well defended tree fiercely protects itself with thick bark walls, deadly gases and sticky resins. “The beetles arrive as thousands of cylindrical buses full of well armed passengers. The bugs direct and time their assault with chemical signals and all hell breaks loose.”
Beetles have also learned to choose the weakest tree in the forest. It is easier to overcome an aging, drought stricken tree than a young healthy one. “Depending on a tree’s vigor, it may take anywhere from 10 to 10,000 beetles to seize it. About 600 mountain pine beetles can take down a mature lodge pole pine, while more than 2,000 Southern pine beetles are needed to dispatch a loblolly pine.” Most sieges only last a day or two.
Nikiforuk said that for years, beetle experts have blamed beetle attack tree death on the pathogenic blue stain fungi, carried by the beetles. “It was believed that the blue stain fatally clogged the trees plumbing.”
However he said this belief is now being brought into question. “Both the southern pine beetle and the spruce beetle can kill trees just fine with, or without the blue stain fungi.”
Bark beetles are just one of four species on Earth that farm, along with termites, ants and humans.
“Bark beetles farm fungi. They take their own crop – which is fungi, and plant it into a tree taking all the nitrogen out. Nitrogen is like candy for an insect.” The beetles use the fungi more for nutrition, than as a mode of killing.
Nikiforuk attributes the mountain pine beetle explosion in B.C., which he calls a lodge pole Tsunami, to climate change and a rash of hot summers in the 1990s, both of which resulted in weakened and stressed trees making them prime targets for bark beetles.
“Most people living in B.C.’s lodge pole country still blame the government for not stopping the mountain pine beetle. People argue that if the New Democratic government of the time had allowed logging in Tweedsmuir Park, the plague could have been contained.” Nikiforuk says the truth is more uncomfortable and complicated than the myth.
“Only eight per cent of the province’s mature pine grows in protected areas, the remainder still stand in timber leases controlled by industry. The province could have logged every one of its parks and protected areas and still lost all of its lodge poles.”
He said the beetle is not the only player in the epidemic. Misguided science, out of control logging, bad public policy and a hundred years of fire suppression created a volatile geography and this, when combined with global warming, released the beetle in epidemic proportions. “The beetle was only doing what it was meant to do, renewing an aging, weakened forest.”
Canada is not the only country to have fought epic battles with beetles.
Norway also had a beetle epidemic in the 1990s.
“It was a big deal, the spruce beetle epidemic in Norway killed one million m3 of trees annually.” According to Nikiforuk, the epidemic was such a big deal, that a rock song called Bark Beetle Boogie hit the top of the Norwegian charts.
Gill’s book, ‘Eating Dirt’ is a gritty look into the lives of tree planters.
She delves into tree planter culture and as a tree planter herself for 17 years, says it is a job of extremes. She asks the question, does tree planting really work? “If tree planting works, then why are we all out of trees that look like they used to? She said secondary forests are not approximating what an original forest should look like.
According to Gill, there was no real reforestation in B.C. until the 1960s – 1970s. “Forests are not as renewable as we think they are and not renewable on the scale we are logging. Gill said she is not an environmentalist and not against forestry. “Forestry paid my way for 17 years ….. tree planters are the best solution we have at the moment. I am not saying anyone should stop logging, but maybe slow down. If China and India were able to successfully re-grow trees they would be doing it and not be buying logs from us. There would not be a global market for wood.”
She said the consequences of logging are not yet fully understood, “There are approximately nine million species on the Earth, only 14 per cent of those have been studied or named …. we don’t know what sort of chain reaction logging creates,” she added.
