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16 February 2004

By Dr. Reese Halter

Black Press, British Columbia

It’s been a brutal winter, but has it been cold enough to kill the voracious mountain pine bark beetles that are infesting our forests? Sadly, even with the frigid temperatures of December and January, the answer is no.

How cold does it have to be in order for these pesky bugs to die? Temperatures of at least minus 38 degrees C for 96 hours or longer are required before the beetles freeze to death. What kind of an adaptation allows them to withstand minus 38?

Mountain pine beetles have the ability to make anti-freeze - just like the ethylene glycol that we put in our car’s radiators. In addition, these bugs are also able to make certain alcohols, proteins and sugars that allow all the free fluids like water and their blood (called hemolymph) to super-cool. This anti-freeze in their bodies prevents the formation of ice. Ice inside mountain pine beetles is lethal. But after exposure to minus 38 for about four days, the super-cooled fluids - all of a sudden - flash freeze and that finally kills the bark beetles.

Why are the mountain pine beetles more susceptible to freezing in November compared to January or February? The answer, surprisingly, is similar to why we winterize our cars.

At the first hint of cold weather, I always trek down to the local garage and have my anti-freeze tested, topped up or flushed. Living in the mountains, I know that winter lasts some five months of the year. And with all the kids’ school and sports pick-ups and drop-offs, I cannot afford preventable winter car failure.

The beetles also cannot afford faulty anti-freeze. So they too use a variety of environmental cues such as shortening day length, increased periods of drought (they need water) and the onset of lower temperatures to prepare themselves for a long, sleepy winter.

If Mother Nature can drop minus 38 temperatures upon the beetles before they have a completed their antifreeze top-up in November, they will perish. But over the past 10 years these inhospitable early winter temperatures have not occurred and so the pest’s populations are now into the hundreds of millions. Yet nature has a wonderful way at balancing. With the winter temperatures in the interior of BC marginally warming, so too does it appear that the summers are getting warmer. If the beetles don't freeze to death, then they are sure to die from the heat of forest fires.

The only worthy Beatles of mention arrived in a British invasion 40 years ago this month. As far as the invasion of the insatiable mountain pine beetles are concerned, my prediction is that within a decade their populations will crash and burn.

Dr Reese Halter is a scientist, environmental speaker and his latest book is Native Trees of British Columbia with Nancy J Turner, 2003, GFS Press, rhalter@GlobalForestScience.org

Tuscon and Banff-based Global Forest Science (www.globalforestscience.org) is a forest biology research institute. With an international multi-disciplinary team of 165 scientists, Global Forest Science is a world leader in forest science research and has often been likened to the Red Adair's of the forest biology world. Global Forest Sciences' many victories ranging from legislation to protect the threatened westslope cutthroat trout of British Columbia, protection of the world's largest ant colony, opening an international insect quarantine facility and helping to save New Zealand's multi billion dollar forestry and agriculture industries from the Australian painted apple moth. Global Forest Science is also dedicated to children's ecological education - visit GFAwesome.
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