640 000 000 cubic metres of dead wood

That is the total amount of timber that has been killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle in BC. The government has said the plague is over because there is more lodgepole pine left for the bugs.

The loss is a huge problem for Canada's economy. Let us give this amount of wood some more numbers to consider it by to give people an idea of what it means:

• 16 000 000 logging truck loads - that would be a bumper to bumper line of trucks 200 000 kilometres long, enough to go around the world five times
• $40 000 000 000 in lost timber value
• $200 000 000 000 in lost export of timber
• 10 years equivalent of timber harvesting in BC
• 5 years equivalent of all Canadian timber harvesting
• 100% loss of Canada's largest export lumber tree
• $20 000 000 000 annual loss to the trade surplus - enough to push us into a trade deficit for years
• Loss of about 40 000 primary forest industry jobs - secondary and tertiary jobs will also be lost

How ever you slice it, the Mountain Pine Beetle is Canada's biggest economic disaster of all time.