Getting tired of the old "Tweedsmuir" argument. Yes, there was a large attack-centre there. BUT- there was beetle all over the place outside of the park, too. We could have clearcut every last stick in Tweedsmuir and this STILL WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.

You've got an even-aged, overmature, declining and decadent stand of (mostly) one type of trees. It's the perfect recipe for a massive beetle infestation. And these things didn't just appear out of nowhere; there's always been an endemic beetle population out there. It just took the perfect scenario (poor stand health, homogeneous timber type, climate, AS WELL AS POOR MANAGEMENT from the Ministry of Forests) to allow it to blow up.

There were a lot of things that the government did wrong, and not logging Tweedsmuir may have been one of them, but that issue is moot: This was going to happen and nothing was going to stop it.

I know a pilot from the Fraser Lake area who used to fly over that area some twenty years back on a regular basis. He saw what was happening in Tweedsmuir park right from the get-go, and sounded the alarm to the government of the day many, many times as it progressed, with the same result. It was always the fact that it was in park where loggers were not welcome under any circumstances, it was in a remote area where 99% of the general public will never know about it, see it, or have access to it anyway, no political gain would be acquired if any politician of the party in power would would dare to suggest logging in any park, even such a remote one (in fact it'd have been be more like political suicide to do so). There was no red showing anywhere else at that time according to this pilot, and he knows full well that the beetle epidemic could have been prevented if we'd have tried to stop it before it got away on us. (there were logging roads within 6 kilometers of the park boundaries at the time).
While we're on the subject, does anyone remember the (what was it - five million? - cubic meters of blowdown that also went to waste in that park because (again) we would never allow those dastardly loggers in there to salvage it !!
Sooner or later, it all comes home to roost, and this one won't go under the rug until all of us old timers who were there at the time, and know the truth are in the ground and silenced for good.
(and then there's the windy-craggy mine, but that's another story) (I wonder if Mr. Harcourt ever did "raft the taft" with ?)??

"We could have clearcut every last stick in Tweedsmuir and this STILL WOULD HAVE HAPPENED."

You do not KNOW if clearcutting would have made a difference because it was NOT TRIED!

We DO know that the warnings were ignored for POLITICAL reasons - not for scientific ones!

That happened because the government of the time had an extreme doctrine about logging in a park - just like some other doctrines that were being put into action in respect to mining, profits and investment, much to the detriment of the whole province.

"... .AS WELL AS POOR MANAGEMENT from the Ministry of Forests)..."

The Ministry of Forests DID advise the government that immediate clearcutting was the proper action to take! The government ignored it.

Can't blame the Ministry for poor management. It wouldn't be fair.

Anyone can point fingers all they want at who dropped the ball but here is whats going on today as a result of the pine beetle.

The dead pine with a 25 cent stumpage rate is the only thing that is keeping a couple of the large cap forest companies in business around here..

A reduced.. timber suply.. Great!! bring it on! it will push up the demand for timber and lumber prices. As well root out the forest companies who have been greedy and have worked the system all this time.. This should open the door for more private nice market sawmillers who cant get access to timber.

I agree totally squirrelnuts.

BCParks site:
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/conserve/pine_beetle/pine_beetle.html#q1

"While it is true that portions of Tweedsmuir Park were centres of beetle population expansion, it is not true that this was the only centre of population expansion. To understand this, it is important to remember that mountain pine beetle naturally occurs in all pine forests in British Columbia at all times. Usually, population expansion is kept in check by cold temperatures. Current conditions (mild winters and abundant habitat) are such that beetles have been able to flourish and multiply rapidly."

"The epidemic in Tweedsmuir was only one of the many places that this epidemic started. There are epicenters (mountain pine beetle hot spots) south of Quesnel, near Fort St. James, south of Williams Lake, near Princeton and in the East Kootenays."

Here is a report of a prescribed burn attempt in the park in 1995, a year after the outbreak was discovered. Conditions were too wet to get a proper prescribed fire going in the plot areas. Read #3 on page 15.

As it says, the attempt to stop MPB with a prescribed burn was not new, but very rare so little information was available on the effectiveness of the technique. The entomologists had little information of the survivability of MPB in such a fire. At that time the only information was based on single tree fires. This was an attempt to get that information. AND it occurred in the Park.

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/bib79525.pdf
Of course we are not the only ones to suffer from MPB. Colorado is another area which has had a major outbreak that commenced in the mid 1990s as well.

Their current state of the forests report, 2/3 of the state forest pine has been attacked.

http://csfs.colostate.edu/pdfs/105504_CSFS_09-Forest-Health_www.pdf

Outbreaks are not dependent on a single location. Outbreaks are dependent on the right conditions. There are multiple locations hundreds and thousands of miles independent of each other which were epicentres.

Of course, the interesting thing to take a note of is that none of these epicentres were immediately treated with prescribed burns as the only solution.

Where is the story that says in BC, or Colorado that a local outbreak was successfully stopped by a prescribed burn?

I can't find one. I would like to see it if someone else does.

Maybe a better thing for us to do is follow the story of the new bark beetle outbreaks in other trees and where that might be taking our forests. Double and triple whammies yet to come?

"(the pilot) knows full well that the beetle epidemic could have been prevented if we'd have tried to stop it before it got away on us."

And he was a forester too, right?????

OOPS ... sorry ... and an entomologist as well.

:-)

Two things that people seem to conveniently forget.

Clearcut logging has never stopped a MPB outbreak. We have a prime example right here in this province that no one even mentions. The Chilcotin area experienced a massive pine beetle outbreak in the 1970s and ‘80s, and the government responded by allowing huge clearcuts in an effort to solve the problem. It did not stop the MPB.

In order to encourage healthy forests for the future, forest managers should employ methods that mimic natural disturbances. These include thinning the forest, partial cutting or selective logging, and prescribed burns, which would re-establish mixed-species forests.

Instead we do very little stand tending, we clearcut because that is machine intensive rather than human intensive and we replant mixed stands with monocultures.

We are tree farming when we pretend we are practicing forestry. Lets pick one and do it right rather than doing both poorly.

Pilots, ranchers and anyone in general who spend enough of their life living off the land around here know alot more than foresters about how the forest works around here.. In fact alot of them find forest practices totally insane..

The observations of a 5th generation farming family whith over 100 years of notes and obesrvations are more valuable and practical than the forester that has been spoon fed dogma in universtiy that is funded by multi national forest companies.

Gus

Acutally we clear cut because selective logging does more damage to timber.
However from an environmental perspective it makes sense.
When you selective log you expose the roots to the trees your leaving behind.. Exposed roots allow fungus attacks which create cubical but rot and honey comb heart rots in the standing timber that is left behind. As well it creates heat stress on other trees.

So be aware if your a log broker and you want to buy timber from a seletivly logged stand..Your client and reputation will thank you..

There was an infestation of pine beetles in the caribou when the socreds were the government and they ignored the problem then. To think that any government or forester could have stopped the infestation is pure politics. In recent years we have not had the cold temperatures that we have had in the past that controlled the spread of the beetle.

The Pine Beetle is part of our ecosystem and when the conditions are right it starts to multiply. Its like a forest fire. We are mislead to believe that we can fix it all. We spent 150 million this year to try and stop the spread. It took mother nature with one little rainfall and our fire fighters all went home.

Now I could bore you with a number of sites you might visit to get all the information from the horses mouth but I’ll leave that to others that thrive on their own ability knowledge.
Cheers

Googled Alberta and the pine beetle.

Voila!

"How is Alberta managing pine beetle infestations?

Single-tree removals, stand-level harvesting, pheromone baiting, habitat modification and the Healthy Pine Strategy are the principal tools we use to fight mountain pine beetle infestations in Alberta. Our attack against the beetle is focused in southwest Alberta, and on the eastern edge of the infestation. Our objectives are to minimize the spread of beetles north and south along the Eastern Slopes, and to prevent beetles from spreading east in the boreal forest. For more information, go to

http://www.mpb.alberta.ca/faq/albertasfight.aspx

What is the benefit of control?

It’s estimated that without a control program, mountain pine beetle populations and the number of trees killed by the insect would have grown by nearly three times each year since infestations began and, without cold winters, the beetles that were killed by freezing temperatures otherwise would have continued to grow at similar rates in future years. By quickly implementing a decisive control program, Alberta has produced important information about the infestation and reduced the risk that the infestation will spread unchecked. In short, it has given the province breathing room to consider options. Had Alberta not done so, the future cost of addressing a much larger infestation would be much greater than what has been spent to date."

Well, well.

"By quickly implementing a decisive control program,...."

They decided to DO something about it and it WORKED!

We dithered and threw in the towel.

Nobody mentioned Dave Zirnhelt. So I will. Dave Zirnhelt.

Thank-you for mentioning Dave Zirnhelt Harbinger.
So who is Dave Zirnhelt?
(ok..ok,I'm kidding,I know who he is, but how many other remember?

Didn't take long for the Liberal to come out.

He said, "We don't log parks". He didn't say "We don't even know how to run a popcorn stand". I'm sure of that. Anymore hints needed?

Is it not far more likely that wildfire suppression had a stronger influence on the spread of the MPB than a lack of harvesting? Wildfires are a natural controller of MPB populations. Lack of fires combined with unfavorable weather conditions (another natural control) most likely provided the perfect storm for widespread infestation. We need to remember that the beetle was here all along and until recently natural checks and balances kept populations in control.

All this discussion about pine beetle....wow.

What surprises me is how people think that if we could have fixed this infestation we would be better off. Sure the Province would look a little greener, but in reality the product we are producing, 2X4's, would still be in the same place. Lumber sales are in the tank due to the slump in the global economy.

Why do we continue to just crank out 2X4's around here?

Can't we figure out how to do something else with wood fibre other than make 2X4's and turning chips into electricity and some pulp?

These great paying jobs are going to come to an end if we can't figure out how to do more in this Province....

Dave Zirnhelt was the father of the pine beetle infestation.

Dave was the man that as the forest minister took political donations from a certain Indian band in the Chilcotin who wanted Carrier to stop harvesting the pine beetle wood in 'their territory' even though Carrier was hiring all locals for the work with potable mills that could go to the pine beetle kill sites... so the beetle could not get free rides all over the province.

Dave took the donations and then killed the Carrier enterprise in a clear conflict of interest that cost the provincial tax payer nearly $200 million in damages awarded to Carrier a decade or so later.

The hysterical part was watching the band chief of one of the bands that killed the Carrier pine beetle operation in its infancy... watching him on the news last week complain that the BC government has done nothing to remove the threat of the dead pine trees from their communities... one couldn't dream up a more ironic outcome then that news clipping last week as they riled on about the lack of government action to deal with the problem.

An article advocating a little common sense sure promotes a lot of myths and misconceptions.

Fact is that logging, clearcut or selective, never stopped a pine beetle infestation. Logging might slow down an infestation, and it captures some of the economic value of the trees that are dead or about to be killed.

Forests with multiple species in most stands, and multiple age classes with not too much old timber, will be more resilient to insect and disease as well as fire, but the bug will always be found wherever there is lodgepole pine.

Fighting the beetle is as useless as fighting forest fires. Spend more of our money and watch nature cure the problem. What ever gave man the idea he can control nature? It's a good thing we werent around when the dinosaurs were dying off. Why did Alaska stop fighting forest fires? I thought educated people were supposed to be smarter when they finished school.

mwk is onto something here . . .

Even if we did log the hell out of that area when the outbreak was going on, what were we going to do with the wood? Were there markets for it? Was there a shortage of wood on the shelves of Home Depot? Would we have been hit with higher dumping penalties? Did we even have the capacity in our lumber industry (loggers and mills) to process that huge volume of wood?

I tend to agree with supertech on this one. Let nature run its course and lets work within its confines instead of thinking that we can somehow change them.