Southwest Alberta dodged a bullet this year in the fight against the mountain pine beetle, said a provincial official.

“There were no in flights in southwestern Alberta this year and we had a pretty good over-winter kill last winter,” said Duncan MacDonnell, Alberta Sustainable Resources Development spokesman.

He said holding the beetles at bay in the Spray Lakes is essential to preventing them from spreading further east towards Turner Valley and Bragg Creek and elsewhere in the foothills.

“It’s also to keep them from multiplying within those key watershed drainage areas, that’s the key priority down there,” he said.

In southwest Alberta, the largest concentrations of the beetles are found in the Spray Lakes and Crowsnest Pass areas.

Operations against the beetle recently received a $25 million shot in the arm from the provincial and federal governments.

The provincial treasury board provided $15 million and another $10 million came from the federal government.

The new funding is in addition to $15 million put in place earlier this year.

The Province will continue with operations this winter identifying and destroying trees found to have beetles. In recent years, it has employed helicopters in the Kananaskis, particularly in the Spray Lakes area, for this work. This year, MacDonnell said more work will be done from the ground with less help from the air.

The beetles have not faired well in the area this year, but MacDonnell said the Province is not going to underestimate the threat posed by the beetles. He said the area could still see an influx of beetles from southeast B.C. next year.

“There is a large pool of beetles in southeastern British Columbia that could come in next year, but for the moment we’ve found some breathing space in the south,” MacDonnell said.

The beetles have destroyed millions of hectares of pine trees in B.C. and it’s estimated 80 per cent of the province’s pine forest could be wiped out by 2013.

While holding the beetle at bay in the southwest watershed areas is still a priority, MacDonnell said the focus is shifting to west-central Alberta where they have gained ground in the past year.

He said the largest area of increase for the beetles was in central Alberta after a large number of the bugs were blown into the area from B.C. during the summer.

“We had a massive in-flight of beetles in west-central Alberta this summer as bad as or worse than the one in 2006 that first brought the beetles into that part of the province,” MacDonnell added.

He said this has pushed the area of infestation further east and south extending as far east as Slave Lake, Whitecourt and Edson in the central portion of the province.

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