Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss forest pests from a New Brunswick perspective. The protection of our forests is something we take very seriously in New Brunswick, and we are happy to share our views and experience on the subject.
I'll speak for just a moment about the New Brunswick context and then focus on the spruce budworm and the current strategy we're taking to fight that.
New Brunswick has a diverse forest, where many tree species are found in pure conifer, pure hardwood, and mixed conditions. The forest industry that is dependent on the forest is also diverse, and includes over 40 mills that depend on long-term conifer supplies of spruce-fir, pine, cedar, and several species of broadleaf trees, including maple, birches and poplars.
The forest ownership pattern is also complex. It's a mixture of Crown forests, small private woodlots, and industrial managed forests, where approximately half of the forest is privately owned. The Crown Lands and Forest Act places the responsibility of forest protection from insect, disease and fire on the Minister of Energy and Resource Development. This responsibility exists for all forest land, including that owned by private organizations and individuals.
The duties related to pest and disease are carried out by the forest planning and stewardship branch in the Department of Energy and Resource Development. Staff conduct a combination of aerial and ground surveys for all forest health issues throughout the province. The coordinated and integrated response to threats like insect and disease in a landscape of complex ownership is particularly challenging. It requires much engagement and collaboration with industry and other stakeholders and organizations.
Through our department, New Brunswick relies heavily on knowledge transfer and resources provided by the Canadian Forest Service and the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers pest working group to optimize our work and inform the minister's direction with respect to forest protection.
The spruce budworm is a significant pest across Canada. Its prolonged outbreak cycles and the extent of those cycles are well documented in scientific literature and won't be covered here. The spruce budworm is, without a doubt, the greatest pest concerning New Brunswick. Evidence dating back to at least the 1700s indicates that cyclical outbreaks have been occurring in New Brunswick every 30 to 40 years. A significant resource in the management of spruce budworm in New Brunswick has been the support of Natural Resources Canada's Canadian Forest Service. The prioritization by scientists of budworm research and technology in Atlantic Canada has led the way for the advancements in management strategies for spruce budworm since the early 1900s.
The Green River project, which was conducted from 1944 to 1973, is still considered one of the most influential studies ever conducted on forest entomology. This research resulted in over 80 peer-reviewed publications and untold knowledge exchange. It has greatly enhanced our understanding of the factors influencing the spruce budworm. This research has continued as a priority of the CFS since the last collapse of the spruce budworm. Scientists in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick have dedicated their careers to understanding the ecology of the spruce budworm. This ongoing dedication has ensured that we are well positioned to address this new outbreak with well-educated and well-experienced professionals.
In 2012, leadership in the CFS, universities, the forest industry and the New Brunswick Department of Energy and Resource Development recognized the looming threat of spruce budworm in New Brunswick. At that time, they developed an initiative, the first of its kind, to take actions to suppress the outbreak of spruce budworm before it occurred.
This concept was supported federally through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and the resulting program, named Early Intervention Strategies to Suppress a Spruce Budworm Outbreak, was initiated. This unique collaboration between federal and provincial departments, universities and the forest industry was given the name “Healthy Forest Partnership”. The effort is to focus on the research and management of spruce budworm rather than the management of the damage from spruce budworm. In other words, the focus is on controlling and managing the insect, not the injury.
In detail, the early intervention strategy uses innovative tools and techniques to detect locations with increasing budworm population and treats them with registered insecticides before populations reach epidemic levels.
We greatly appreciate the support of the federal government in this endeavour. It announced support of around $74 million over five years, based on a sixty-forty federal to provincial and industry cost-sharing basis.
Some of the recent advances made by the early intervention strategy that have had immediate practical application to budworm management in Atlantic Canada include the following. First is a greater understanding of the population dynamics of emerging outbreaks, because we've never had the chance to study the onset of an outbreak and understand how an outbreak grows and spreads.
We are getting a refined understanding of treatment timing and application that provides safer product choices, lower volumes and more targeted applications in an economically and environmentally responsible approach. An early intervention strategy allows us the opportunity to understand if treating low-density populations is effective at keeping them low. We are also able to use smarter aircraft technologies to be more precise in application rates, location and timing. We are also seeing improvement in the radar tracking of migratory events that allows the early detection and planning of population shifts. Researchers at the CFS in Quebec and Ontario have been working on identifying not only when large dispersal events occur, but also what might trigger these events.
We have also strengthened communications with the public and media through communication strategies such as the award-winning budworm tracker citizen science project. The communications teams have had tremendous success in reaching the public, explaining the nature and goals of the research, and answering questions as they arise. The budworm tracker now reaches almost 500 homes annually from Thunder Bay, Ontario to St. John's, Newfoundland, with more than 300 traps in New Brunswick alone. This puts some of the outreach into the hands of the concerned public and empowers them to do something to help.
The collaborative nature of the EIS program is a model for how management of large-scale disturbance can be successfully implemented. It demonstrates that multiple agencies with differing interests and goals can work effectively toward a common objective of preserving forest values from the destructive nature of the spruce budworm. The results of the early intervention strategy have been a measurable success. Less than 1,000 hectares of defoliation were identified in New Brunswick in 2018, which is less than that identified in 2017. This result is despite continuous severe defoliation in the lower St. Lawrence area of Quebec, which exceeds two million hectares and is taking place within 50 kilometres of the New Brunswick border as of 2016.
Also, there were lower than projected treatment needs toward the treatment program this year. Based on work from leading population growth models by Dr. David MacLean at the University of New Brunswick, treated areas in New Brunswick were almost one third less than originally projected. There is very high acceptance by members of the public and by private landowners to date as well. In fact, less than five per cent of the woodlot owners we contact about treatment choose to opt out of the treatment program.
Spruce budworm outbreaks can last decades. This is the first proactive approach to manage an outbreak, and we believe that it is a $300-million approach to a $15-billion problem. With the ongoing support of our federal partners, we may be able to reduce the impacts not only on the New Brunswick economy, but also on our Atlantic neighbours. If this strategy proves successful, it will become the new standard across Canada for future outbreaks of spruce budworm and have major economic and ecological savings.
Thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity.