EMPIRE OF THE BEETLE
Author Andrew Nikiforuk on the Bark Beetle's Seige of North American Forests
A bug the size of a rice kernel is killing off more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees in North America. Historically bark beetles are not pests. A bark beetle can probably hear the distressed song of a drought stricken tree and for tens of millions of years they have been pruning or collapsing ailing, aging or drought stricken forests.
On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Andrew Nikiforuk, critically acclaimed author of Tar Sands, whose new book Empire of the Beetle, asserts that misguided science, out-of-control logging, bad public policy, a hundred years of fire suppression, and climate change have released the world’s oldest forest manager from all natural constraints. We'll talk about the massive destruction the bark beetle is causing and what it may mean for the future.
Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Canadian journalist who has written about education, economics, and the environment for the last two decades. His books include Pandemonium; Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Oil; The Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Plagues, Scourges and Emerging Viruses; and Tar Sands, which won the Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award.