An entomologist with the Canadian Forest Service believes the recent cold snap will kill a lot of mountain pine beetles but will not “annihilate” the tree-infesting insects.

Allan Carroll said he believes the snows will have a “pretty big impact” in terms of “causing mortality” in mountain-pine-beetle populations spreading in B.C.’s Peace River region and northern Alberta.

“It might set them back,” Carroll told the Straight by phone from Saanich, “but the problem hasn’t gone away or is unlikely to go away with this level of cold.”

Over the past several years, the beetles have cut a ferocious and relentless path through lodgepole pine trees in central B.C. Carroll said his research led him to estimate early on that “somewhere between 75 to 80 percent of the mature pine trees would be killed by about 2013 or 2015”.

“It looks like our projections are bang-on,” he said.