The iconic tree of the north, depicted by painter Tom Thomson on a windswept isle in Georgian Bay, is threatened by a creature not much larger than a pencil tip.
A bug barely the size of a grain of rice has burst out of British Columbia and now threatens the entire boreal forest clear to the Atlantic coast.
The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is native to North America. In British Columbia, they infested lodgepole pine, Pinus contorta var. latifolia, and larvae spending winters under the bark of mature pines. Until the late twentieth century, the pest was largely controlled by the harsh winters of the provincial interior. Then climate change stepped in with devastating effect.
