Global highlighted research from UBC’s Okanagan campus that found controlling the spread of mountain pine beetles could instead increase the pest’s population in areas where there are not many of the insects to begin with.
Rebecca Tyson, a UBCO mathematical biology professor, looked at four different beetle management strategies: no management, pheromone baiting, tree removal and both pheromone baiting and tree removal combined.
“From the field work done in Banff, we know that baiting didn’t stop the beetle epidemic,” Tyson said. “Baiting may have slowed it down, but it did not stop it.”
Similar stories appeared on Castanet and Kelowna Now.
