[Cross-posted at Land Use Watch]
There's a lot of talk about global warming these days. To be honest, I can't help but see much of it as "far off". Receding glaciers and rising sea levels seems to be something for our children's children to focus on.
But that's simply not the case. Even in terms of land use and preservation of native forests, global warming is already having immediate and dire impacts.
In British Columbia, 22+ million acres of old-growth forests have been decimated in the past 5 years alone by beetle infestations, notably by mountain pine bark beetle, and, to a lesser extent, beetles feeding on spruce and fir.
You can get a sense of the damage by looking at flight photos of forests in BC and this disturbing slide show.
(The redness in the photos below, a hallmark of pine beetle infestation, reveals dead trees.)
In the last photo, you can see the beginnings of infestation that will soon wipe out the entire forest in this watershed.
The mountain pine bark beetle is not an invasive species. It is native to BC forests. But, typically, icy winters and cold snaps would limit the population growth of the beetle. The increase in global temperature is causing the beetle to thrive:
And:
Millions of acres of Canada's lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging.
The mountain pine beetle has infested an area three times the size of Maryland, devastating swaths of lodgepole pines and reshaping the future of the forest and the communities in it.
Moreover, forest fires would limit the number susceptible hosts -- yet fire suppression has precluded such naturally occurring limits.
Somewhat perversely, the massive kill of BC forests has caused a resurgence in logging activity. New mills are being opened to process the huge number of infected trees. Yet, after the backlog is complete, one has to wonder about the long term viability of the logging industry given the future lack of mature forests.
And the pine beetle isn't limiting itself to just BC. No, the real worry, now, is that it will jump the rocky mountains and spread into Canada's eastern provinces:
Last summer, provincial forestry workers were shocked to find the destructive pine beetle had jumped the Rocky Mountains much faster than anticipated -- as far east as Grande Prairie and Whitecourt.
And, ominously:
Whether the outbreak can actually be brought under control seems doubtful, given the vagaries of nature's forces. Billions of the beetles arrived last August, airborne in the jet stream. Some residents near Grande Prairie said the sky was darkened with the bugs, and they sounded like rain on the roof.
Oh, and it's not just Canada at risk:
More than 640,000 acres of Colorado lodgepoles -- 42 percent of the state's total -- were infested last year, according to the Colorado State Forest Service.
And, of course, there are some people happy that all of this is happening:
"Suddenly, the landowners were thinking ‘Good God, all the trees are dying, they’re all going to fall down and create a mess,’ " says Berg. "But Realtors loved it. They described all the beetle-killed properties as having ‘emerging views.’ "