Mountain pine beetle

Common card · No. 380921

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a species of bark beetle native to the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. It has a hard black exoskeleton, and measures approximately 5 millimetres (1⁄4 in), about the size of a grain of rice. In western North America, an outbreak of the beetle and its microbial associates affected wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 160,000 km2 (40 million acres) of forest in British Columbia. The outbreak in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado began in 1996 and has caused the destruction of millions of acres/hectares of ponderosa and lodgepole pine trees. At the peak of the outbreak in 2009, over 16,000 km2 (4.0 million acres) were affected. The outbreak then declined due to better environmental conditions, but many vulnerable trees had already been destroyed. Mountain pine beetles inhabit ponderosa, whitebark, lodgepole, Scots, jack, limber, Rocky Mountain bristlecone, and Great...

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