A Tiny Beetle Is Destroying Entire Forests | National Geographic

you can make an analogy to cancer when
someone’s sick and the cancer is
spreading sometimes you need to amputate
in order to stop the spread and that’s
sort of what we’re doing here
they’re marked with pink flag and we go
in there
commence falling and burning to kill the
infected trees and to stop the spread of
the mountain pine deal
to every tree that we cut down those
pine beetles that are in that tree have
the ability to infest another seven to
ten trees for every infested tree that
we’re cutting down we are protecting
those entities when pine beetles begin
attacking the tree they start emitting
pheromones which call other beetles to
join in the attack the larvae to get the
feeding in that phloem area so
essentially a tree’s die of thirst it’s
a very quick process
if there were no control at all being
done here beetle populations would
continue to grow across the border
forest and and heading to eastern Canada
if you look out here it’s devastating
you’re just cutting down the trees and
burning them that seems like a waste but
we want to protect this resource this
needs to be done
right
we are doing a lot of good work than
those numbers are dropping but the fight
is not over