Feds give Alberta $10M to fight pine beetle

The mountain pine beetle that has devastated thousands of hectares of forest in British Columbiaand Alberta over the past decade has moved to within an hour's drive of Edmonton, provincial officials said Monday.

"It came in on a thermal or in the jet streams in July, which infested our forests in a way in these last 90 days that was unexpected," Conservative MP Rob Merrifield saidas he announced $10 million from the federal government help contain the outbreak in thenorthwest part of the province.

"It has thrown urgency into the issue of the pine beetle in Alberta, and because of that, we have to accelerate what we do to be able to deal with it."

Alberta's $9-billion forest industry and its 38,000 jobs are at stake, said Merrifield, who represents the federal riding of Yellowhead.

"British Columbia has lost half of its marketable pine," added Ted Morton, minister of sustainable resource development for Alberta. "We don't want that to happen in Alberta."

Alberta has spent more than $200 million to battle the pestsince 2006, Morton said, adding another $25 million has been committed this year.

The money will be used to hire crews to harvest infested trees, which turn red and die from a fungus the beetles carry. The worry is that the bugs could spread into jack pine in the boreal forest that runs right across the country.