This has become a MAJOR problem in British Columbia. The sawmills in this area are processing this timber almost exclucivelly. Originally they thought they had 8 years to harvest this timber. They realized they only had 3-5 yrs. They're millions of acres of dead standing timber and it is spreading.
A mountain pine beetle infestation that has already killed off billions of trees in British Columbia is threatening to take over Alberta's jack pine, marking the start of a deadly cross-country trek.
Each mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice, but the voracious insects have already devoured an area of B.C.'s forest the size of Iceland.
Another two million hectares in Alberta are now at risk, and the infestation could spread to Canada's boreal forest.
"It likes all pine species and we've recently discovered this includes jack pine, which is a component of the boreal forest," said Allan Carroll, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/07/04/pine-beetle.html?ref=rss
Yep. And Prince George has been hit especially hard.