As the mountain pine beetle season gets into full swing, researchers at the University of Calgary are trying to figure out what makes the insect tick. The current mountain pine beetle outbreak started in British Columbia in the early 1990s and crossed into Alberta in 2006 causing serious impact on commercial lodgepole pine. Recently, the…

Hundreds of insect traps have been set up around Edmonton so city pest management staff can monitor any threat to the city’s urban forest. “About half of our street trees are green ash and the other half are American elm so between the two of them there’s a lot of vulnerability there,” said Mike Jenkins,…

The milllions of moths that have been carpeting parking lots, cars and even people in the Campbellton-Dalhousie area over the past couple of days are likely related to the dreaded spruce budworm. Rob Johns, an insect ecologist with Natural Resources Canada, says the influx seems to be a migration of spruce budworm moths and is likely due the current weather conditions. “These…

Hugh Murdoch with the B.C. Wildfire Service said the fire is one hectare in size and not expected to grow. “We are pretty confident it will not get any bigger,” said Murdoch. Along with one helicopter, there is a B.C. Wildfire Service initial attack crew and unit crew – totalling 21 forestry firefighters – assisting…

Imagine being able to accurately predict where forest fires might strike — even in the most remote locations in the province — using freely accessible data from a NASA satellite. This is the work of Quazi Hassan, a geomatics engineering associate professor in the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, whose NSERC funding has just been renewed….

Two new forest fires are burning the northeast region as of Sunday, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry reports. Both fires are relatively small, but fire rangers with the MNRF have not yet brought them under control. The two fires are Bancroft 15 at 0.1 of a hectare and Parry Sound 29 at 0.4…

High rates of logging old growth rainforest on Vancouver Island will lead to an ecological and economic collapse in a generation unless provincial government policy changes, warns a new Sierra Club study. And B.C.’s Forest Practices Board also says the province, which acknowledges the critical ecological importance of old growth forest, needs to improve protection….

Consider a cluster of year-old pine trees, scrawny and less than 2 feet tall, next to some 20-year-old pines that stretch more than six stories into the air. Which of these represents a healthy, well-managed forest? According to Matt Dowdy, a contract forester whose land management company is based in Albemarle andLouisa counties, the answer…

Like all Canadians, I watched the nightly news in disbelief as wildfires devastated the Fort McMurray region throughout the months of May and June. I read about how the blaze destroyed roughly 2,400 homes and buildings, and how 80,000 people were forced out of their residences for nearly a month. But I still wasn’t fully…

Thunder Bay city councillors have delayed a decision on whether to adopt a proposed action plan to combat the emerald ash borer in the city. Administration was looking for approval — as well as $550,000 in the 2017 municipal budget — to start treating eligible ash trees with an injected chemical that destroys the invasive…