Funding Extends Pine Beetle Research
Prince George, B.C. – UNBC will continue to be part of a research project that is focused on the Mountain Pine Beetle.
(at right, Dr.'s Huber and Murray – photo courtesy UNBC)
$4.4 million dollars in funding will allow the project, which involves 5 universities and other organizations, to continue.
UNBC Ecosystem Science and Management Professors Dezene Huber and Brent Murray have been involved for the past five years with the project and will continue their research with the new funding..
Dr. Huber says they have learned much about the beetle, the tree and the fungus that allows the beetle to break down a tree’s defences. The new funding will allow researchers to examine how differences in a host tree’s defences impact the pine beetle larvae survival over a deep cold winter.
While much of B.C. is dealing with the aftermath of the pine beetle epidemic, it is predicted the infestation will spread northward beyond the 60th parallel and further eastward into Alberta. “We will be investigating how the insect might spread into new regions, like the jack pine forests of Alberta and beyond” says Dr. Murray. The new funding will also provide an opportunity to train new researchers.
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We will be investigating how the insect might spread into new regions, like the jack pine forests of Alberta and beyond says Dr. Murray”
I thought everyone knew these things fly!
I’m curious as to where they plan on finding any beetles in BC to study? :)
Ya, lets pay someone to figure out how to close the chicken coop door after the chickens have escaped.
This has the appearance of tapping into a bottomless money pit! Now, PLEASE tell me if I am wrong: This money pit is totally funded by the Canadian taxpayer – Enuff, I say!
If my memory is correct, this is also not the first packet of funding for Beetle Research. So what is this team of esteemed researchers (in five universities)going to discover that we already don’t know? That the beetle lives! That the beetle eats! That the beetle flies! That beetles have been around for centuries and have been active in one way or another for that time! That the only effective way to stop its spread is by Forest Fires! Horrors! Bad smoke, bad smell, hard to breathe.
As with the spruce beetles, eastern cut worm, and other forest pests, nature has to take its course. We are simply too good in fighting forest fires and forest pest spread is one of the key results of this modern activity.
Let us stop this idiocy – for some academics to find out that a pine beetle is indeed a living organism. If they are successful at ‘determining what the problem actually is’, will they seek out these creatures in order to soak the forest land with a myriad of chemicals that may or may not treat the problem. All for the purpose of meeting the desire of the odd professor to satisfy his/her ego and so they can add another publication to their individual PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper) repetoire.
It is high time we stop peeing tons of money on this issue and instead use it on something useful, such as our helpless health system – but that is another topic for another day.
Nuffsnuff you nailed it. It’s about grant seeking and paying the mortgage not science.
People bitch about city workers, schoolteachers but seem to give the uni a free ride, why?
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