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Strategies & Market Trends : Fascist Oligarchs Attack Cute Cuddly Canadians -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (290)	11/29/2001 6:06:07 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1293

' Western Canadian Beetle Epidemic Spreading Rapidly By Allan Dowd VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A mountain pine beetle epidemic, already considered the worst in Canadian history, expanded rapidly last year and threatens C$6 billion in lumber in British Columbia's forests, according to a report on Wednesday. Four years of unusually warm winters in Canada's largest lumber producing province have allowed the beetles to infest and kill lodgepole pine trees in an 8 million hectare (20 million acre) area -- a region larger than Ireland. The infested area is 80 percent larger than last year, researchers said. Lumber producers said they will try to stem the spread by cutting recently infected trees, but warned there is little anyone can do unless this winter produces enough cold weather to kill the insects. "We can slow it, but we can't arrest it," said Greg Jadrzyk, of the Northern Forest Products Association, which helped fund the study for the province. The epidemic, which is heaviest in the Cariboo region of central British Columbia, has hit the province's lumber producers at a time when the United States has imposed trade sanctions on Canadian softwood lumber shipments. "There is really no point in cutting the wood if we have no where to ship it," said Jadrzyk, noting the C$6 billion in threatened lumber is about C$1 billion more than the province normally exports to the United States each year. The tiny beetles lay eggs in lodgepole pine. The insect's larvae then eats the wood just under the bark, which the trees need to supply themselves with nutrients. The trees are usually dead within a year of being infected. In addition to killing the trees, the beetles also carry a fungus that creates a blue stain in the uneaten wood. The stain does not damage the wood's structural integrity, but makes it harder to sell for aesthetic reasons. The beetles have been found in the forests for thousands of years, but their populations have been kept in check by extreme winter cold, which kills the larvae, and by forest fires, which destroy the infected trees before the beetles can spread. British Columbia has not had a major bug-killing cold snap for several years, and the fires that once raced through the forests each summer are now fought by a multimillion-dollar control effort. Jadrzyk said the industry wants to concentrate its efforts on cutting recently infected trees, although he acknowledged it does not have enough milling or logging capacity to handle the amount of cutting that researchers say would be needed. Proposals to use clear-cut logging in areas of heavy infestation are also likely to be opposed by environmental groups. Loggers are also pressing Ottawa for financial aid to fund "an aggressive silviculture" program in older areas of the infestation, where trees are already dead, to speed up the forest's natural 30-year regeneration process. "We're trying to avoid a 30-year loss of production from those dead forests," Jadrzyk told reporters. ' ca.news.yahoo.com