The brown spruce longhorn beetle is spreading in Nova Scotia despite the efforts of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and their quarantine efforts.

"It attacks spruce, but it prefers white spruce," said Gina Penny, a provincial forest entomologist. "But it will also attack red and black spruce as well."

According to the CFIA, the beetle has been active in Nova Scotia since 1990, but was only discovered in 1999. Traps set around the province monitor the insect's activity and have recently detected it in Victoria, Kings and Lunenburg counties. That brings the total number of counties containing the beetle to nine.

Gregg Cunningham, Atlantic specialist for forest pest emergencies with the CFIA, said they are somewhat surprised by the emergence of the beetle in Cape Breton, which is in Victoria county. “That's quite a ways off from our cluster of finds,” he said.

The infestation is hardly news to Clifton Sangster, a manager and forest technician with North Inverness Forest Management.

"It is getting worse; nothing stops it," he said. "It keeps multiplying and as long as it has food it will keep eating. And there is lots of mature white spruce for it to feed on."

Areas hit hardest include the Margarees and East Lake Ainslie, which Sangster referred to as devastated.

"You just drive and it is just hill after hill of brown and grey dead spruce."

The only use for the infected trees is as chipper wood, said Sangster. Also known as hog fuel, it can be used by some as an option to burning oil.

"It soon will become a salvage operation," he said of the infestation. "I know there are some places that are 25 to 30 per cent now of hog fuel and maybe 70 to 75 per cent pulpwood as compared to two years ago when it was 10 to 15 per cent hog fuel or chipper wood."

He said the deadwood must be harvested.

"If we do not get into these areas and the trees are allowed to die and blow down and just fall in a big tangle, we will never be able to go in there and do any followup (silvaculture) treatment," he said.

He said the best way to manage the problem is to monitor for insect damage, then remove any infested trees to reduce or minimize that breeding material for future populations.

Read more:
C.B. woodlot owners fighting spruce beetles (Chronicle Herald)
Spruce beetle spreads into new territory (Globe and Mail)