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Empire of the Beetle

How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests
by Andrew Nikiforuk
Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests. Greystone: Douglas & McIntyre, dist. by PGW. 2011. c.240p. maps. index. ISBN 9781553655107. pap. $17.95. SCI
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Bark beetles: they are as tiny as a match head, individually fragile, and yet as a swarm more destructive than any forest fire. Nikiforuk (Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent) follows bark beetle outbreaks from the last three decades in Alaska and the western United States. Despite its grim title, the book paints a complex picture of bark beetles that showcases their incredible qualities as well as their potentially harmful ones. Nikiforuk argues that bark beetles are a part of western North America's natural ecosystem, but the growing human population and its demands on natural resources place the insects in the role of nuisance. As a pest, however, they are incredibly dangerous to forests and have, to date, killed more than 30 billion trees since the 1980s.
VERDICT Nikiforuk tallies the human and ecological costs of bark beetles' destruction of wide swathes of trees, costs that are exacerbated by climate change. His plainspoken writing style is especially poignant as he gives voice to the devastating human experience of lost forests. Recommended.
Reviewed by Marianne Stowell Bracke, Purdue Univ. Libs., West Lafayette, IN , Oct 01, 2011
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