By Canadian Press

Positive from cold snap

Extreme cold hoped to have helped in fight against mountain pine beetle

Jan 21, 2020 | 8:32 AM

Albertans may have survived last week’s extreme cold snap, but experts are hoping mountain pine beetles did not.

Temperatures in Jasper, Hinton and Sundre, key battlegrounds in the fight against pine beetles, dipped below minus 40 degrees a couple of times during the cold snap.

University of Alberta biological sciences professor Janice Cooke says early projections show it might have been enough to kill more than 95 per cent of pine beetle larvae.

Caroline Whitehouse, a forest health specialist for Alberta’s Ministry of Forestry, says it typically takes a few years of large-scale cold events to cause notable mortality rates in pine beetles.