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Article: Natural-born killers; Fear of a preservationist outcry paralyzed B.C. in the face of a costly pine beetle plague.(pine forest devastation)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
- Article from:
- The Report Newsmagazine
- Article date:
- July 30, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 United Western Communications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It takes half an hour for a small plane to fly over the dead, red-hued pine forests in the northern third of B.C.'s massive Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. The cause of the devastation? A plague of milli-metre-long mountain pine beetles. The pests have destroyed about 1.2 million acres of forest, and smaller infestations of beetles can be found across 14 million acres of the B.C. Interior. Despite this, however, B.C.'s new minister of water, land and air protection, Joyce Murray, refuses to change a strict B.C. Parks policy that has provided the beetle with a safe haven from which to mount its killer campaigns.
The beetle is able to fly over half a mile to find a ...