Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park (Submitted photo)

 

The mountain pine beetle has infested a higher than expected amount of trees at Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, and as a result, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment has extended their pine beetle survey contract with Great Western Forestry.

Provincial Forest Entymologist and Pathologist Dr. Rory McIntosh says every year they conduct aerial surveys with a helicopter to identify where the red trees are, and then conduct ground surveys on that tree, and others around it to identify other beetle-attacked trees, then mark those that need to be removed.
 
He adds this year they had found more infected trees on the ground than they had predicted: "We do our annual budget estimates based on estimates of what we might expect to see on the ground. All this is that we found more trees that had been attacked than we had anticipated."
 
The mountain pine beetle is responsible for destroying vast tracts of forest in British Columbia, and McIntosh adds they are a serious concern in Saskatchewan: "The last outbreak we had down in the Cypress Hills was in the early 1980s. We did do fall and burn operations down there at that time. That together with a lethal cold event led to the collapse of that outbreak."
 
The extension of the survey contract will allow Great Western Forestry to complete work to verify infested trees and mark them for removal.
 
Colin Powers talked with Dr. Rory McIntosh: