North of the Border
May 2007

Seeing Red in the Columbia Mountains
by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

For the past few years, the blue-green mountains cradling the Columbia River north of the border have been painted increasingly with red as large stands of lodgepole pine grow sick and die. The dying trees are part of a large-scale ecological disaster faced by the province of British Columbia: little black beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) boring into the trunks of lodgepole pine and leaving behind a dying forest.

Historically, the mountain ranges north of the border were dense with a wide variety of coniferous trees, from small, sunny pockets of ponderosa pine to stands of moisture-loving cedar and hemlock clustered in the creek drainages. The natural fire cycle kept the forest healthy, encouraging wide variability of tree age and type. The result was a mosaic of species that could withstand fire, disease, climate fluctuations -- and the hungry mouths of insects. The lodgepole has existed in southern B.C. for a long time, but was once not nearly as dominant a tree as it is now.

Given its strong commercial value, the lodgepole has been favoured for tree planting after logging for decades. This, combined with the suppression of natural fire cycles since the 1960s, has resulted in the swelling population of older lodgepole in the Columbia mountain region, as well as the rest of the vast B.C. Interior. Lodgepole makes up 50% or more of the tree composition in some parts of the Interior. Climate change means warmer winters that allow more beetles to survive. The bug is having a feast.

Government predictions are that by 2014, some 80% of the province's 12 million hectares of lodgepole pine will have been killed by the voracious little beetle. Presently, trees that are diseased but have not yet died are being harvested as fast as industry can cut them. Meanwhile, many, many stands of the tree are dying. Swaths of red cascade across the Columbia mountains, a visual testimony to the 100,000 hectares so far destroyed in the Arrow-Boundary and Kootenay Lake forest districts.

All of this forest mortality could have an effect on the way the rivers flow. I've been digging in my garden since the beginning of April, but up high, things are still cold and snowbound. About now, the warmer, longer days start melting the high snow in earnest. Coniferous forests play a role in shading the forests so that the melt occurs gradually.

Scientists have started to theorize that steep mountains devoid of much tree cover could result in a snow pack that melts more quickly, increasing the possibility of flood in minor drainages and more erratic river levels in the major systems. In addition, a forest of dead trees will not absorb and distribute into the ground the moisture from melting snow at the same rate.

Proof yet again that water and land form a complex relationship, whether it be as a wetland or a winter forest surrounding the Columbia River's abundant flow. It seems that nature wants to restore ecological balance, even if the process appears destructive and drastic to human inhabitants.

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes is the author of Geography of Memory and The Inner Green, coauthored by K. Linda Kivi. She lives in the West Kootenays of British Columbia.

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