Let’s Hear It For The Beetles!

Yup, consider yourself lucky. If it wasn’t for beetles we wouldn’t be able to live here on Earth as well and easily as we enjoy. But a war has been waged on the Mountain Pine Beetle in BC.

Folks; beetles have been around longer than we have, there’s way more than us and many, many different species, all with a relationship to key plants, animals and other living things or organic material requiring decomposing and recycling. This is the great role of beetles.

Superior wildfire suppression methods in the Southern Interior of BC this last century has created forests of old, overgrown, and over populated trees. Naturally, these forests were a community or mosaic of different aged trees. The fire periodicity (expected average years between major fires) in Lodgepole Pine forests was 65-85 years. Fire consumes the weakened trees returning the minerals that formed the tree back onto the earth as nature’s fertilizer for the next generation of forest.

Mountain Pine Beetles and other wood boring beetles, seek weakened trees to easily lay their eggs under the bark. In spring, the eggs turn into larvae chewing their way through the cambium layer (living tissue under the bark) which cuts off the updraw of water and minerals to the leaves for growth. Also, the blue staining fungi dehydrates the tree. The dead trees may increase the chance for wildfire or stand as wildlife trees for years, but eventually they fall and decompose allowing the process of regeneration.

So both fire and insect infestations are nature’s way of regenerating the forest.

A healthy population of insect eating birds (especially woodpeckers) and bats normally moderates beetle populations, but many of these birds have also been suffering from habitat loss and pesticide use.

But be rest assured, the Lodgepole Pine forests are just the first type of forest to be hit hard by beetles in our area. Ponderosa Pine, Douglas-fir and Subalpine forests all have insect partners or become disease prone without fire for regeneration.

Climate change, with increasing temperatures, is expected to dry up the soil eventually weakening our forests making them more fire, disease and insect prone too.

The solution? As I see it, if we like our wilderness, we need first to understand and appreciate ecology. If we’re going to live, play and work near, in or close to wilderness forests we need to selectively log or remove trees that fire would normally take, being careful how we affect the soil and water and possibly use fire to clear overgrowth. Leaving Wildlife Trees or putting up bird houses and bat houses might help. Further wilderness areas need to be left to their natural fire cycles.

We can also build Firesmart interface homes with metal or tile roofs, Hardiplank siding, concrete porches, etc. and regularly clean out gutters and more.