In the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Drawing on first-hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters, and rural residents, Andrew Nikiforuk investigated this unprecedented beetle plague, its startling implications, and the lessons it holds, in Empire of the Beetle (Greystone Books, in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, 2011).

Empire of the Beetle was selected as a finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing in 2012. The prize is awarded annually to a nonfiction book that captures a political subject of interest to Canadian readers and enhances our understanding of the issue. It was also shortlisted for a BC Book Prize and the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction in Alberta.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests

BOOKS:

Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests (Greystone Books, in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, 2011) $19.95 978-1-55365-510-7
Wrote foreword for Canada's Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast (Raincoast Conservation Foundation, 2012) $45.00 978-0-968843-27-7
The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude (Greystone Books in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, 2012) $29.95 978-1-55365-978-5


[BCBW,2012]