Alberta to spend $55 million fighting pine beetle

The Alberta government is pumping another $50 million in emergency funding into fighting the mountain pine beetle, bringing its total campaignfor the year$55 million.

The focus of the control program will be to remove trees already killed by the infestation, officials with theSustainable Resources Development Ministry said Monday.

Each of those trees contains enough pine beetles to infest an additional 10 trees, officials said.

Crews will also be culling older trees that are at risk of becoming infected and locating new areas where the beetle is becoming a problem.

Most of the work will be done in two areas on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the ministry said.

Officials believe the cold winter has helped kill off many of the beetles, but they are still worried that new bugs will spread into Alberta this summer from British Columbia.

The beetles, which are as small as a grain of rice, attack mature pines, tunnelling into the trunks and spreading a pathogenic fungus. The beetles have already destroyed large parts of forests in British Columbia and are expected to wipe out nearly 80 per cent of the province's pines by 2013.

The Alberta government spent more than $134 million over the past two years fighting the mountain pine beetle in the northern Peace River district and along the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

Up to six million hectares of pine forest in Alberta are at risk of being affected, or about 15 per cent of the province's total forest, provincial officials said.