A tiny beetle and the fungus it spreads have already wiped out six billion Canadian dollars' (5.14 billion US dollars') worth of timber, and is predicted to eliminate thousands of jobs and push many rural towns into extinction.

"This is the first manifestation of pestilence as a result of climate change," said Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada.

The mountain pine beetle "takes out approximately 480 billion cubic meters (17 trillion cubic feet) (of wood) a year, three times Canada's annual harvest," Lazar said in an interview.

So far, the pestilence has hit Canada's westernmost province of British Columbia hardest, with pockets of destruction in adjacent Alberta and the western United States.

Experts fear this is a harbinger of more infestations of these or other unchecked indigenous pests that will hit timberlands throughout North America.

The fate of Lac Le Jeune on the Nicola Plateau highlands, about 180 miles (290 kilometres) northeast of Vancouver, is typical.

As the beetle infestation grew in recent years, pine tree needles turned red. Because the dry deadwood posed a fire and windfall hazard, this winter authorities cut 25,000 trees from a once-lush provincial park, leaving 144 camp sites exposed on the lakefront.

The logs were added to the mountains of deadwood piled outside sawmills throughout British Columbia.

Chief provincial government forester Jim Snetsinger said British Columbia aims to salvage as much wood as possible before it rots. Although beetle wood is stained "denim" blue, products made from it are structurally sound.

But this salvage operation is so massive it is re-shaping the province's enormous forest industry, worth about 17.7 billion dollars (15.2 billion US) annually and an economic mainstay.

About 15 million hectares (37 million acres), or 25 percent of British Columbia's commercial forests, are pine, and the sudden glut of wood -- the province grows seven percent of the world's softwood -- is affecting international trade patterns, said Lazar.

Environmentalists such as the Sierra Club protest that more money is needed for research. Lazar's industry association wants Canada to more aggressively lobby for global reduction of greenhouse gases.

Research is under way, such as a study on the effect of pheromones on beetle reproduction, while Snetsinger hopes future technologies will help.

Still, British Columbia's main response has been to log as much wood as possible, and replant.

It has led to a glut of short-term jobs that will eventually vanish entirely until new seedlings mature in 50 to 80 years.

While the mountain pine beetle, a tiny insect the size of a grain of rice, is blamed for the devastation, the cause behind its spread is complex.

For millennia, pine beetles have feasted on lodge pole pine and laid eggs under the bark. Historically, beetle populations would swell each summer and die back by as much as 95 percent each winter when temperatures plunged to minus 20 C (minus 4.0 F).

But as the global climate warmed in the past 100 years, said Snetsinger, "the mean average winter temperature increased by 2.2 to 2.6 degrees in the interior of the province."

It has now been 15 years since temperatures dropped low enough, for long enough, to kill beetles.

Their population has exploded and they are now in nearly 40 percent of lodge pole pine. By 2013, estimates Snetsinger, "80 percent of susceptible pine will have been affected."

The trees die from the double blow of burrowing insects and a fungus they transport through their protective bark. Once inside, the fungus strangles the flow of water from the trees' roots.

In the end, said Snetsinger, "the tree dies of dehydration."

Misguided forestry management has also helped the beetle thrive. Pine beetles prefer old trees, and historically old trees burned in natural forest fires. In recent decades, such old growth was saved by forest firefighters.

"Things are getting out of balance," said Lazar. "This is just the beginning. Our industry is so dependent on healthy biology."

Related Links
Forest Products Association of Canada