Fight Fire With Beetle Juice
By Andrew Impey
Picture the scene; you’re out socialising one evening and someone enquires what you do for a living. “I research beetle dung”. It’s not exactly the greatest pick up line in the world is it and you can just imagine all the word associated jokes that would get hurled at you. Trust me, I know what it’s like – I worked on ducks for four years and I’m only just getting over it.Meet Tyler Cobb, a forestry graduate from the University of Alberta who has spent the last few years on his hands and knees in the forest, desperately searching for dung. Beetle dung to be more precise, or frass as it’s known in the scientific world.
Armed with only a pair of tweezers and keen eyesight, Tyler has been following beetles around with a shovel and scooping up their daily defecations. I say ‘shovel’, but actually a teaspoon would do. They produce so little in the way of dung, he’s actually only collected 10 grams in total over the last two years.
Despite the obvious lack of the dark stuff, that hasn’t stopped Tyler from drawing a few tasty conclusions from his research. It transpires that this beetle dung is vital to the regeneration of areas ravaged by forest fires. The burned out and decaying trees are home to these fire-loving critters and it’s their droppings that play a vital role in replenishing the soil of lost nutrients.
However, when logging companies salvage what timber remains following a big fire, they also take with them the beetle larvae that could help rejuvenate the
forest. Tyler argues that the beetle’s valuable back-end contributions must not be underestimated and 10-25 percent of the burned timber should remain to provide homes for the six legged fire fighters of the forest floor.For more opinion check out:
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Image: Martin Kessel
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