Pine furniture ? US feels the pine beetle effect
Sep 21 2007 12:00AM
People living in Colorado are experiencing "disbelief" at the spread of Canada's pine beetle infestation, according to reports.
More than 35,000 square miles of pine trees in British Columbia, the country's largest lumber exporting province, have been wiped out by the insects. Now over 750,000 acres have been infested in the US state of Colorado.
"It makes me very sad to see so many trees dying when you know that it was so beautiful when they all were green," tourist Lynn Stephenson told website cbs4denver.com.
The Longmont Daily Times-Call newspaper speculated that the creatures were being transported on firewood from one region to another throughout Canada and the US.
Earlier this week fire crews in Alberta, Canada set out to torch large sections of forest to prevent the insects spreading.
A report from British Columbia's ministry of forests and range warned that if the beetles continue to kill at their current rate, the equivalent of almost a quarter of the province's whole volume of market timber will be gone.
The beetles have lived on ponderosa pine in Western Canada for thousands of years, but nature usually controls major outbreaks by killing the creatures with the extreme winter cold or forest fires.