Erica Samis, senior health officer for Forest Health & Adaptation Section at AESRD, talks about the objectives of AESRD, the current Beetle Management Program, what is being planned for the future and how research money has benefited the forests.
The two provincial objectives in Alberta are to prevent the spread north and south along the eastern slopes of Alberta, and prevent the spread eastward into the boreal forest of lodgepole-jack pine hybrid and jack pine forests. The provincial strategies are prevention & susceptibility reduction, detection, risk analysis & control, and rehabilitation. Some of the current work includes population assessment surveys, dispersal bait deployment, aerial surveys, green:red surveys, and site priority assessment. This year they reached over 7,000 sites on the ground to survey, and completed over 600 green:red surveys.
Proposed objectives for the future include minimizing the spread of MPB north and south along the eastern slopes of Alberta to minimize the impacts to key watersheds, and protect endangered tree species & critical habitat. For the nearly four hundred million dollars spent in research and action, one million infested trees have been treated since 2006. Also, if the infested trees were not controlled there would have been over 47 million infected trees in the landscape. This presentation was a part of the Mountain Pine Beetle Information Exchange Forum in April of 2014.
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