Warmer Winters Boost Insect Invaders In Alberta - Edmonton Journal

[hatrack]

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In recent years, the mountain pine beetle, an insect not considered native to Alberta, has taken advantage of the balmy winters. Traditionally, a week of -35 to -40 weather was enough to keep the tree-boring pests from crossing the B.C. border into Alberta forests. But now mountain pine beetles are destroying trees so fast that they're being likened to a "silent forest fire." As a result, provincial foresters and Parks Canada officials in Jasper and Banff have had to resort to extreme measures to control them.

The province has already cut down and burned more than 5,000 infested trees in the Willmore Wilderness and Kakwa Wildland Park area. And Parks Canada is doing the same to a lesser extent in Jasper and Banff. "Winters like the one we're having this year have become a joke," says Dave Smith, the fire and vegetation specialist for Jasper National Park. "I don't have the exact numbers, but I bet you that this year we've been averaging around -5 C here in Jasper. "We've been able to hold back the tide here in the park as far as the mountain pine beetle is concerned," Smith says. "But with Mother Nature on a 24-hour-day, 365-day-a-year clock, it's going to be hard for us to keep this in check." "Sometime soon, I suspect, we're going to have a lot more red trees around here," Smith says.

In Edmonton, no one knows for sure what the absence of a deep winter freeze means for trees and gardens. But the arrival of three ash tree pests -- the ash leaf-cone caterpillar in the late '90s, the cottony psyllid in 2000, and the spiny ash sawfly in 2003 -- may signal bigger challenges down the road.

Fortunately, the damage the ash leaf-cone caterpillar does to trees is mainly cosmetic. And if evolution does its work, a tiny parasitic wasp native to Alberta may build up its numbers and keep the caterpillar in check. Of the other two, there doesn't appear to be any natural control for the cottony psyllid attacking black ash trees. Dan Johnson, a University of Lethbridge entomologist, suggests that scientists simply don't have the resources or the funding to seriously investigate how climate change will affect insect populations in Western Canada.

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http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=0666ec36-af47-4752-8c05-b1bacbb4324a&k=20630

[AX10]

1. awwwwwwwwww...

:nopity:

Alberta is right wing cest pool anyways.

[achtung_circus]

3. So,

that makes it all right, then.

Politics aside, Alberta is full of very nice people.

[MrMonk]

4. Look at the bigger picture

Warm weather pests are moving north and invading progressively larger areas. So are parasites and other organisms that cause disease. The situation in Alberta is just one more example of a global phenomenon.

There's a bit of historical irony related to this. In the late '70's, there was serious discussion as to whether the earth was entering a long overdue ice age. The nay-sayers (who are not necessarily the same as those who present counter-arguments) would point to the migration of species as proof that the global cooling hypothesis was bunk. Now, with broad and mounting evidence of global warming, the nay-sayers completely ignore species migration.

[MrMonk]

2. Let's get it over with . . .

"I, for one, WELCOME our new insect overlords!"