Mountain pine beetle infestation
Jake | October 27, 2009BEETLE PROBLEM
Title has those magic words that spell the reason for cheap Canadian lumber. Warm winters and dry summers have set favorable reproducing conditions for beetles and beetle population has grown out of control. Now those beetles are out there and wiping out forests.
PROBLEM SOLUTION
The weapon that Canadian forestry authorities can use against the beetle is clearcutting. Other plans are in the works and scientists are experimenting on products that could use beetle-felled trees as their raw material (burning is always possible, but might not be as profitable as something else). Time is of essence here and product development is unlikely to come to rescue. All this results in rising piles of trees, which need buyers. This in turn results into sinking lumber prices and rising U.S. lumber tariffs.
WHAT ABOUT LOG HOMES?
On the log homes and cabin front, Denim Pine is already using beetle-killed pines as raw material for log homes. Firstly such an idea doesn’t sound too appealing, because we all try to keep our log homes free of any dubious growth, but let’s take a moment to study the matter. That will be the topic for my next post though.
Picture and various information of this otherwise cute beetle can be found here. Read detailed article of mountain pine beetle infestation.
