The mountain pine beetle that has devastated forests in British Columbia and made its way through large parts of Alberta, has for some reason remained sporadic throughout Jasper National Park (JNP).

While other parts of Alberta, including forests near Hinton, are experiencing high populations of the pine beetle infestation, JNP fire communications specialist Kim Weir said she isn’t sure why populations aren’t spreading as quickly, but mentioned three factors that likely have come into play.

One is the four-man crew that JNP has had over the winter working on their cut and burn program of all the colonized trees. “Because our populations are fairly light and sporadic, they are looking at a couple hundred in the main valley, we can kind of keep on top of that, so that’s helping,” Weir said.

Another reason Weir accredits the slow spread in the park is due to the prescribed burning in Mount Robson Provincial Park in BC. “Mount Robson has had some really good prescribed burning in the past in their park, so of course, they are coming on the wind, so that’s going to help us for sure. And our (own) prescribed fire program too has helped. We’ve had a lot of prescribed fire focused in the main valleys, for ecological reasons, for protection reasons and of course for mountain pine beetle reasons.”

Weir also said that poor weather in the springs and summers the last couple years might have had an effect.

“We don’t know officially why our populations are light and sporadic but there are a number of factors that are working in our favour,” she said.

The largest concentration of the mountain pine beetle is in the main valleys of the park, which are the Athabasca and Miette valleys, along the western portions (closer to BC).

There is also a moderate-sized population in the Smokey district of the park, but Weir says it hasn’t been reproducing much, and as of last spring, reports showed a decline in population in that area.

“It’s just that we are getting more immigration into little sections, but it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere,” Weir said.

As of mid-February 2009 136 green attack trees and 200 red attack trees were found in the Athabasca and Miette valleys of JNP. Green attack trees are trees that are dead but still have green, or sometimes slight yellow foliage. According to Weir, this colour change happens very gradually, and often attacked trees are not obvious until shortly before the mature beetle leaves the tree in the summer.

Red attack trees are trees that have been colonized by the pine beetle for about one full year, and the successfully colonized, and dead, trees will have red needles.