There has been a lot of concern about the spread of the mountain pine beetle. We have put together some beetle facts on this little critter, sourced mostly from the Government of British Columbia’s website.

• The life span of an individual mountain pine beetle is about one year.

• Each mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice.

• Pine beetle larvae spend the winter under bark. They continue to feed in the spring and transform into pupae in June and July.

• Adult mountain pine beetles emerge from an infested tree over the course of the summer and into early fall.

• The mountain pine beetle transmits a fungus that stains a tree’s sapwood blue.

• Comprehensive testing has confirmed that the blue stain caused by the beetle has no effect on wood’s strength properties.

• These insects have already devoured an area of B.C.’s forest the size of Iceland.

• The mountain pine beetle infestation will have economic implications in the future for 30 communities around the province.

• 25,000 families in British Columbia are having their livelihoods impacted by the beetle infestation.

• The mountain pine beetle prefers mature timber. After 80 years, lodgepole pine trees are generally classed as being mature.

• B.C. is believed to have three times more mature lodgepole pine than it did over 90 years ago, mainly because equipment and techniques for protecting forests against wildfire have greatly improved over time

• Cold weather kills mountain pine beetle larvae. Sustained temperatures of -25 Celsius in the early fall or late spring, and -40 Celsius in the winter are needed to control populations.

• Hot and dry summers leave pine drought-stressed and more susceptible to attack by the mountain pine beetle.

• The start of the current mountain pine beetle infestation in B.C.’s central Interior can be traced back to 1993.

• The beetle has been spreading east across the Rocky Mountains since 2002, mostly in Willmore Wilderness Park and areas around Canmore.

• A hectare is considered infested if it contains more than 10 beetle-attacked trees.

• Mountain pine beetle outbreaks develop regardless of property lines. They can appear in mountain subdivisions, backyards and municipal parks the same as in wilderness areas.

• The mountain pine beetle in B.C. is as far-ranging as Fort St. James to the north; Cranbrook to the east; Houston to the west; and Manning Park, located between Hope and Princeton, to the south.

• The direction and spread rate of a beetle infestation is impossible to predict exactly.

• In addition to B.C. and Alberta, the mountain pine beetle can be found in 12 western American states, and even Mexico.

• Scientists believed that the mountain pine beetle could only survive and thrive in lodge pole pine. But now they think, and have seen evidence, that mountain pine beetle can survive and thrive in jack pine

• If the beetles make the jump to the jack pine, an infestation could wipe out billions of trees in the boreal forest all the way to the East Coast.

• The mountain pine beetle has been spotted in Grande Prairie, further north in Alberta than experts had expected. Grande Prairie is 455 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

• Alberta’s beetle hotline number is 1-877-927-BUGS (2847) for the Edmonton area. Signs of a pine beetle problem include a brown crystallized substance on the trunk of the tree, as well as sawdust around the base.