Anyone who has had to drive a back road, shovel a sidewalk, or walk off the beaten path this winter is well aware of how much snow has fallen this year. But one Metis crew who has been busy battling the mountain pine beetle knows the depths of the frozen white stuff better than anyone else does.

But this crew is used to hostile environments. The men who call themselves the Beetle Battlers work as forest firefighters in the summer months. This year is the first time Alberta has decided to battle the mountain pine beetle and who knows the forests better than forest firefighters. The crews began eradicating the insect at the beginning of November and finished up in late February.

Through Nesokmahtan (a holding company owned by the members of the Region), Region VI put a full crew of Metis men to work to help battle the insects that threaten the forests of northern Alberta I.

“I feel we need to recognize these men and the work that they do,” Sylvia Johnson, Region VI president said. “And understand that to be a firefighter, or to be a pine beetle control worker, there is a lot more to it than people may think, a lot more responsibility.”

Johnson added that because of the seasonal nature of the work these men typically do, the opportunity to help eradicate the beetles during the winter months provided a welcome offset to the usually intensive summer firefighting season.

“These men in the north need two seasonal jobs to make a full time living, so what they do is firefighting in the summer and either slashing, or now pine beetle control, in the winter.” Johnson said.

But the winters in northern Alberta pose different challenges than firefighting. One of the most difficult challenges is being able to move from place to place. The crews of eight men start their day by creating a path to the trees infected by the tiny pine beetle.

“The first guy had it rough,” said Melton Lizotte about the 7 a.m. trek into the bush near Worsley. “You have to break a trail, it’s very hard. Sometimes the snow is up to your waist.”

The men would sometimes have to create a path half a kilometer long before reaching the infected conifers. For longer distances, crews would be flown in to start the process of destroying trees infected by the mountain pine beetle. Many days it would take the men more time to get in an out of a infected area than they would actually spend destroying the bug.

The Beetle Battlers look for trees marked with a blue identification stain or saw dust surrounding the pine tree. Once the trees are identified as being a home to the mountain pine beetle they are cut down and burned to destroy the eggs and larvae. Crews canonly destroy trees in designated areas. Each tree was bucked up into smaller logs to allow for quicker burning.

Although the men have worked hard, they see their efforts as minor in comparison to the capacity of survival of the insect.

“It’s awful,” said Lizotte. “It’s a losing battle. There isn’t a way of fighting nature.”

While Lizotte’s camp had about 140 men stationed in Worsley, there were other camps contracted throughout the province. With each crew of eight managing to remove about 100 ft. of trees each day the efforts seemed small in comparison to the 800,000 to 1.5 million estimated infected trees. The estimated 1.5 million trees is equivalent to enough lumber to build 9,500 homes.

Fred Smith, a fellow Beetle Battler, says the mountain pine beetle started to make its home in Alberta a few years ago.

“My friend was telling me he had already seen it and that was two years ago,” said Smith who has worked on forest firefighting crews for the past 14 years. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to devastate our forests.”

Johnson, who beams with pride when talking about the crew, has the utmost respect for the men who help keep the forests thriving.

“These people are unique. They were born in the bush, grew up in the bush and know the bush and that’s what makes them so good at their job,” said Johnson. “Not everyone could do their job.”

“Who else is going to be able to survive the bush like they do? They go out there and they work. They love their job.”

The mountain pine beetle is worse than forest pests like the tent caterpillar or spruce budworm because the mountain pine beetle kills the tree it infests. It destroys the tree thanks to its diet.

“They like to eat the cambium layer immediately under the bark,” according to Jens Roland a biological scientist who teaches and conducts entomological research at the University of Alberta. “This is the layer that is alive and produces growth each year.

There are two main reasons why the mountain pine beetle has rampantly reproduced the way it has in the last two years in Alberta. One is the weather and the other is the lack of enemies.

“Most people believe that the milder winters over the past decade have allowed the beetle to survive better and spread further,” said Roland. “Normally the beetle is killed in the winter if temperatures drop below -35 degrees Celsius.”

The mountain pine beetle was first described in the Blacks Hills of South Dakota, according to Roland. The insect is a normal part of the pine forest in the U.S.A. and B.C. and have not been a component of the Boreal forests in Canada until recently.

“Because it is mostly prairie between South Dakota and the Canadian Boreal forest… the current invasion has come via BC over the mountains,” Roland said.

There are three main types of pine beetles and they have very few natural enemies.

“There are some insect parasites and predators, but because the beetle is under the bark they have a hard time getting at them,” said Roland. “Woodpeckers will attack them, but there aren’t a lot of woodpeckers compared to the number of beetles so they have a minimal impact.”

By Charity Borg