Surge of spruce bark beetle in Fiona-weakened trees keeping P.E.I. removal companies busy
'There's no reversing the process. You can't perform CPR and bring it back to life'
Dead spruce trees are cropping up around Prince Edward Island this year, and service companies are seeing an increase in calls to remove them.
Some of the trees are being eaten and killed by the spruce bark beetle. The spruces were weakened by post-tropical storm Fiona, and that made them prime targets for the pest.
"We typically have spruce bark beetle removal jobs throughout the year, but this year is two to three times more for sure," said Kurt Laird, owner of Laird Tree Care.
Laird is getting calls almost daily to remove dead spruces, and the work often involves taking out a whole group of trees, not just one or two.
Jeremy Arsenault, owner of Branch Manager Tree Service, said he's also getting between three and five calls a week to remove trees that were killed by the beetle.
He just wrapped up a job in one neighbourhood that involved taking out 15 trees.
"If you look in farmers' fields, along the roadways, pretty well everywhere, you'll spot one single dead spruce tree or a clump," Arsenault said. "It's pretty common now."
He said spruce beetles can kill a tree within three or four weeks.
"This year we'll get calls where the spruce trees were alive last fall and dead this year," Arsenault said.
Laird hopes this will be the worst the situation gets.
"I'm hoping this year will be the peak," he said. "It might be good for business, but it's not great for the Island to lose so many more trees."
'It's got to be cut down'
Laird said he can spot a tree that's dying because of the beetle pretty easily. It will turn brown, and the beetle will make pen-sized entry holes in the bark.
"A healthy one will have sap all up and down the bark," he said. "It almost looks like toothpaste on the side of the tree, and if you do see the ones that have the holes with no sap those are your key indicators before you can see it in the foliage."
We lost a lot of trees during Fiona and Dorian and now we've got the secondary problem of pests.— Kurt Laird, Laird Tree Care
There's also very little tree service companies can do to stop the spread of the beetle.
"The only thing you can do is get rid of the infected tree and get it off the property," Arsenault said.
"Once the needles turn brown there's no reversing the process. You can't perform CPR and bring it back to life.... It's got to be cut down."
What's next?
Spruce trees are found all over the Island, and are often used for privacy hedges around homes.
If a property owner does lose a number of spruces, said Laird, it can be an opportunity to plant better and different types of trees. He recommends speaking with an expert to come up with the right plan.
He said the spruce beetle has been a problem on the Island for as long as he's been in business — around two decades — but not at the level he's seeing this year.
"I'm hoping it will get back to its regular levels. It's a big issue," Laird said. "We lost a lot of trees during Fiona and Dorian and now we got the secondary problem of pests that are killing the trees."
Fortunately for the Island's spruce tree population, Charlottetown-based research scientist Christine Noronha said the surge in the beetle's population may not last very long.
"Eventually over a long period of time the population is going to drop," said Noronha, who works with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
"There won't be any stressed trees left for them to feed on, unless we have another hurricane."
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