Pick up pine-beetle bill

One problem — among the many — with mountain pine beetles is they don’t respect borders. The interprovincial boundary didn’t matter 11 years ago when a plague of the pests was devouring swaths of British Columbia’s forest, thanks to a laggardly response in that province from industry and government to an infestation starting in the mid-1990s.

In 2006, swarms of wind-borne beetles flew eastward into west-central Alberta.

Since that initial invasion, Alberta’s government and forestry companies have engaged in an aggressive counterattack. Alberta has become Canada’s beetle battleground as the province tries to do what B.C. failed to do. One estimate puts the cost of the fight from 2004 to 2016 in Alberta at $484 million.

Making matters worse, however, is yet another incursion of the bark beetles into Alberta from Jasper National Park, one more jurisdiction that some observers suggest didn’t take the problem seriously enough.

Parks Canada said it has had a beetle-management plan for the park since 2015, including prescribed burns and tree removal, but it appears to be too little, too late. If so, letting the beetles turn the park into a ravaged beachhead for a renewed onslaught on Alberta is irresponsible and unforgivable. Parks Canada must do much more to remediate the infestation.

Given that the latest onslaught of beetles is swarming in from parkland it oversees, it’s incumbent on the federal government to shoulder much of the cost.