Natural Resources committee  The bulk of the research largely has been driven by the U.S., but quite a few of my Canadian Forest Service colleagues and others in academia do work directly with the U.S. scientists as well. In a sense, the science isn't respecting the borders either in that regard. There is a

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. Ecosystems are not static and they respond to inputs of disturbance constantly. That's just how they work, and if there happens to be another species capable of exploiting the resources that the one species under threat has given up, they will exploit it for sure.

Natural Resources committee  Your question is another complex one, and I'll do my best to be brief. It's worth pointing out that the fire suppression activities came on the heels of significant disturbance, which essentially removed fire from the forest and produced a very old, contiguous pine smorgasbord

Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. In places where lodgepole pine would have been mixed with other species, and today where it is currently mixed with other species, I would highly recommend that you remove the lodgepole and let the other species dominate the site. In other areas, where lodgepole pin

Natural Resources committee  Yes. It's a complex question, and you and I have discussed this in the past. What I will do here is be as brief as possible. Mr. Henry alluded to some of the problems with the mountain pine beetle in terms of what it is. Is it invasive, or is it native? In the context of Jasper

Natural Resources committee  Insofar as what to do now, Jasper really no longer has a mountain pine beetle problem. It has a dead tree problem. The mountain pine beetle is now an issue of Hinton, and in fact it's now in the Sundre FMA, if you hadn't heard.

Natural Resources committee  Effectively, Jasper has a problem with dead trees and a high fire risk. Should they be doing something? Absolutely. They do have a community that they need to protect, and I believe they are doing work to actually protect that community with FireSmart applications.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. It's worth pointing out that the federal government in previous iterations has actually expended a great deal of money towards the mountain pine beetle, but that hasn't actually been consistent in recent years.

Natural Resources committee  That said, yes, there is a significant role. The beetle has crossed from B.C. to Alberta and now threatens to cross from Alberta to Saskatchewan. I do know that the Government of Alberta has begun dropping very significant hints that their level of commitment to the problem can't

Natural Resources committee  With all due respect, the issues that suggests are a bit of a red herring. The mountain pine beetle is incredibly good at what it does and there is lots of variation in the populations. I do know of the work you're referring to, and I am a bit concerned that it suggests that we

Natural Resources committee  I can take a stab at that, and perhaps Mr. Henry can follow. I was a Canadian Forest Service scientist until eight or nine years ago, after which I moved to the University of British Columbia. I have some familiarity with the federal government and its structure in terms of fore

Natural Resources committee  In short, the answer to that would be yes. It's worth pointing out that the efforts on the part of Alberta to this point have primarily focused on attempting to kill beetles directly and, in doing so, reduce the population. It's those efforts that have shown an impact of slowing

Natural Resources committee  It's certainly an issue that we're considering. Have we altered our practices? Not yet. We don't have the capacity to do so in an effective manner at this point in time. The problem that we've reached—the stage at which we currently exist—is effectively the product of many decad

Natural Resources committee  We do have evidence of mountain pine beetle activity that goes back over 8,000 years in western North America. That evidence is primarily based upon fossilized bits of insects collected from lakes. All that can really tell us is that the beetles were there, and we can only assume

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much. I'd just like to take a few moments to outline the role that climate and climate change is playing in forest disturbances and make some special references to the mountain pine beetle, moving forward. As Mr. Henry points out, natural disturbance is a part of