The forestry industry in British Columbia has been hammered over the last 12 months from all sides. As Innovatek notes in this week’s Friday Offcuts, “mill closures, job layoffs (the West Coast’s largest forestry company, Western Forest Products, just announced that it’s shutting down most of it’s logging operations next week with 800 loggers affected by the move) and of course the mountain pine beetle has knocked the industry for a six. Selling lumber from infested forests into a market already hit hard by reduced demand because of the collapse of the US housing market has been tough.” The mountain pine beetle has been the real killer though. According to new government statistics, about half of the marketable forest estate in BC (estimated to climb to a staggering 76% by 2015) has been ravaged by a nearly decade-long beetle infestation. The outbreak of mountain pine beetles has affected trees over an area of 13.5 Mha. As of last month, the insects had infested and killed about 710 million m3 of timber – up from 582 million m3 at the same time last year, according to a recent news release.

To add to the industry’s woes, a just released report says that the beetle is now transforming BC’s forests into a major source of greenhouse gases. Federal scientists say that by the time this unprecedented infestation ends, an extra 1,000 Mt of carbon dioxide will have been released into the atmosphere. The report’s lead author says this is five times the annual emissions from all the cars, trucks, trains and planes in Canada. After “the beetle has eaten itself out of house and home” in BC the authors have suggested that given favourable conditions in future, such as the mild winters now being experienced, the beetle could well spread across Canada’s vast northern boreal forest, one of the most important stores of carbon on the planet.