- FREDERICTON, New Brunswick -- In our rush to become part of the global village,
somebody forgot to tell us about the bugs.
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- Scientists who watch over the forest
industry are sounding alarm bells about the arrival of insects that could
threaten the existence of our most important trees.
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- Foreign bugs and fungi have been hitchhiking
rides to North America for years on wooden packing materials and loads
of lumber, but the pace of their illegal immigration has quickened with
the phenomenal growth in world trade.
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- Alien bugs have already altered the look
and makeup of North American forests.
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- Throughout the east and mid west, Dutch
elm disease has wiped out or drastically reduced the stately elm, a popular
shade tree. The chestnut blight forever altered eastern hardwood forests
by destroying the beautiful and valuable American chestnut.
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- "We know the magnitude of damage
pests that don't come from here can cause," says Eric Allen, a research
scientist with the Canadian Forest Service in British Columbia.
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- "In their native habitat they tend
to be kept in control by predators and parasites that have evolved with
them over time. But when they come to a new home, like North America, they
usually come without their predators and their populations can go rampant.
Often they find new hosts that have no genetic resistance against them."
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- In an effort to stomp out an immediate
problem, the Canadian government is getting tough with one of its fastest-growing
trading partners, China.
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- While China provides many goods streaming
into this country, it's also the source of a particularly destructive and
dangerous bug: the Asian long-horned beetle.
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- The beetle is already established in
New York and Chicago where it's busily turning hardwood trees like maple
and poplar into what look like standing strips of Swiss cheese.
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- The threat to Canada's sugar maples,
our national symbol, is enormous.
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- Beginning this month, China must use
heat or chemically treated wood cargo crating on all shipments to Canada.
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- The move is straining relations with
China, Canada's fourth-largest trading partner. Already one Chinese shipment
involving wood packing has been quarantined at a Vancouver-area port.
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- "The long goal we have is an international
standard which will require that all wood from all countries be treated,"
says Allen. "Everyone would win in that situation, all the countries
in the world."
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- But Allen admits achieving that goal
won't happen overnight. In the meantime, new pests continue to arrive on
our shores.
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- Allen was recently examining shipments
at the port of Vancouver when he spotted a load of granite from Norway
braced with pieces of wood.
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- When bark on the freshly cut logs was
stripped away, Allen was horrified to discover more than 1,500 critters,
mainly beetles, including a number of potentially devastating European
spruce bark beetles.
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- "The Asian long-horned beetle is
a really serious problem ... but it's not the worst we could imagine,"
says Allen.
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- "Canada's conifer resource, for
example, is a bigger target and the spruce bark beetle is a very serious
problem in Europe. The beetle carries a fungus that kills the trees. We
don't want that here in our spruce forest ... If it gets established, we
could see serious damage."
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- Ed Hurley of the Canadian Forest Service
in Fredericton says the damage extends beyond killing trees. He warns that
just the spectre of infestation could kill trade.
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- "You may have an introduction to
a single location in Canada, but that single location could be interpreted
by our trading partners as established in Canada and that would have impact
on the lumber trade across the broad sector rather than just the location,"
Hurley said.
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- "These things have a way of getting
out of control."
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- While inspectors watch for foreign insects
at Canada's ports and use special traps in warehouses, the increased pace
of trade and new methods of shipping goods make it harder to find bug-laden
wood.
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- "The rate is changing because global
trade is really increasing," says Allen. "We're moving things
around faster from countries we didn't trade with as much before, like
China and Russia.
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- "But we're also moving things differently.
It used to be all our problems were at ports. Now we fly things or move
them in containers and while they may land at a port, they're not necessarily
opened there."
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- Governments around the world, including
Canada, are lumbering into action as they realize the potential impact
on indigenous ecosystems.
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- Allen said the restrictions on China
are significant.
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- "Insects and diseases will still
be coming in from all over the world, they're coming in all sorts of ways
and they do slip by us.
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- "But the smaller we can close the
net the better. It also sends the message that we're very concerned and
we want it to stop."
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