A University of Alberta professor is commencing new pine beetle research with an aim to control the spread of the pest in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Maya Evenden, a Professor of biological sciences at the U of A, has observed that the flight capacity and genetic variability of mountain pine beetles pose a danger to Alberta's $4-billion forest industry by infesting and killing pine trees.

The beetle has to fly to reproduce when it comes out of the trees as an adult. Mountain pine beetles were first established in Alberta forests in the mid-2000s after a huge outbreak of beetles in BC. This caused millions of beetles to increase above the forest and be blown into Alberta. The mountain pine beetle is the devastating pest to North America's mature pine forests. These beetles have affected southwestern Alberta and now are starting to spread into northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Pine beetles cause threat to Canada's boreal forest with pine trees, which covers about half of the forest in the upper foothills of the Rockies and around 15%of the whole boreal forest.

According to Duncan MacDonnell, a spokesman for Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, about 25% of Alberta pine trees have been affected to some extent by the infestation.

There will be about $420 million to $600 million loss annually to the forest industry if all Alberta pines were to be affected by the beetles, said MacDonnell.

The easy way to fight the spread of beetles is to cut down the infested trees and burn them before the beetles can spread, according to Evenden. "If we can find a molecular indicator for how they fly, that will be good information because the genetics varies with landscapes", she said.