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not too long ago I was really beginning
to lose a lot of hope for her for us I
was just seeing so many bad changes
because they’re under attack I became
interested in nature before I could walk
I was out camping obviously very low to
the ground and so the first things I
experienced were insects and fungi and
things like that and that has stuck with
me ever since
I’ve been working on bark beetles fungi
and forests for about 25 years
I have such an intense passion for
nature it just translates through my
entire approach to life so the mountain
pine beetle is a really complex but
really fascinating insect even though
it’s only a few millimeters long it’s
capable of killing millions and millions
of trees over a short period this is the
largest mountain pine beetle outbreak
ever recorded it’s something like 10
times bigger than any we’ve known of in
the past but also if you look at it in
the context of insect outbreaks in
general it’s probably the biggest one
ever recorded on the planet for any
insect
mountain pine beetle outbreaks are
climate driven we’ve had an extended
period of warm and dry and that’s
allowed the beetle to really take off
for a very long time so at this point 70
million acres across Western North
America have been killed
it changes water dynamics it changes
habitat for wildlife and so the effect
of losing these trees could have massive
ramifications for a lot of things we
don’t typically think about so many
people look at the mountain pine beetle
like the antagonists the bad guy but
really it’s just an organism doing what
it does the outbreaks in the past have
been regenerative they actually help
restore the forest you know we really
need to take the blame off the insect
and put it on where it belongs which is
human activity it really comes back to
us
I’ve been working in these forests where
95 99 percent of the trees have been
killed they’re just absolutely
devastated but if you look around you’ll
see that there’s a tree here and a tree
there and they’re perfectly fine why did
these trees survive when none of the
other trees did so we began to look a
little bit closer and we began to take
core samples we began to take a measure
of their resin chemistry which is
basically how the beetles recognize the
trees and we took collections of DNA we
see that they have characteristics that
mean they may be pre adapted to a
warming climate that’s given us a lot of
hope and so now we’re focusing a lot of
attention
identify these these individuals that
that really may have what it takes to
help our forests continue on we’re in a
pivotal position in time right now in a
couple of ways one is that if we don’t
take action to turn climate change
around pretty soon we will see
catastrophic change when we look at
people we see a sea of individuals when
we look at a forest we see everything is
the same so we need to start putting
faces on the trees out there in the
forest and if we start thinking of them
that way we can begin to manage
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you
you
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