Mountain Pine Beetle Messes With Supply

The mountain pine beetle has severley impacted the lumber business in British Columbia. These mountain pine beetles are attracted to pine trees and have spread across the forest. According to the article, "the little critter has now infested an estimated 7 million hectares of timberlands (roughly the size of West Virginia) and may kill off 80 percent of the province's pine forests by 2013". Although this has killed off the trees the economist quoted on the page seems to think that this will increase supply. But, you might say that it doesn't make since that the supply would go up when these beetles are damaging the trees. Well, the wood can still be used for some things and since the British Columbia Ministry of Forests has authorized an increase in the amount of annual trees to cut, landowners are cutting the affected trees down in order to avoid a forest fire that would kill of the healthy pine trees still remaining. This will have a really sharp increase in supply of the pine trees which they will try to get the most money out of them that they can. But, as for the future, once the affected pine trees go bad, there will be a shortage in the supply of pine trees in British Columubia.