Mother Nature and Jasper’s lay of the land seem to be working in the town’s favour, as the mountain pine beetle appears to have gone around most of Jasper National Park (JNP) as it spreads through central Alberta.

As other parts of Alberta are combating the beetle as far north and east in Alberta as Whitecourt, JNP’s fire and vegetation specialists and crews have slowed down their pine beetle work due to a lack of funding.

Park officials are still making regular monitoring flights over the park and the Firesmart crews that continue to thin the forest around the townsite are making sure any infected tree ends up in a fire pile, but the program has come to a halt, at a convenient time.

The pine beetle typically matures in a one-year cycle, where all the beetles in an area mature and grow in synch with each other – a necessity for when they ‘fly’ over a two-week period. JNP fire and vegetation specialist Dave Smith says the beetle in Jasper right now is on a two-year cycle and are not in synch, which is slowing down the spread through the park.

“Fortunately for us, this all comes at the same time as the funding source has dropped off. I don’t know if that was the reason that the funding dried up, but the good news is that Mother Nature, right now, appears to be keeping them in check. But as I say that, I need to keep my fingers crossed because I hope that stays that way. Things could change,” says Smith.

He attributes this two-year cycle to recent cold and dreary springtimes that Jasper has experienced the last couple of years.

“What we’re finding is the warmth that the trees should experience for the beetle inside the tree isn’t there,” he says. “So it’s helping keep the development unorganized. If the beetles are not in synch with each other they don’t do as well, so the lack of organized flight bodes well for the slowing of the eastern spread.”

A single female beetle will make a gallery inside a tree where it stays, and Smith has been finding they do not have parent offspring, or side galleries, which is where the hatched eggs start to move as they expand. That’s not to say they aren’t keeping a serious approach, adds Smith, as they continue to monitor within the bounds of the budgetary constraints.

Meanwhile, the little bit of forest thinning near the town and park doesn’t hurt, as it allows them to come across beetles – which Smith is then informed about – and the thinning allows for an increase in vigor in the trees, making them stronger and more able to battle the beetle.

For now, trying to find infected trees is like finding a needle in a haystack. Over the last five or six years Smith says they’ve found between 200 and 300 infected trees a year, compared to the tens of thousands of trees that are being found in regions to the north and south of Jasper.

“It’s not economical at all (to go looking for every tree),” Smith says. “But by putting roadblocks in front of the beetle in the form of prescribe fire, we believe it will be a good contributing factor to the slow-down or hopefully the stopping of the beetle as it comes through the park.”