We are pleased to acknowledge the financial support of The Access Copyright Foundation.
A heartfelt thanks to our many friends and family who have responded so generously to our appeal for support to take my art to the IUFRO conference in Spain in May. Bill and I feel incredibly blessed.
Many thanks to our individual sponsors.
warmly,
Claire
Tonight we had the pleasure of hearing Andrew Nikiforuk and Charlotte Gill talk about their new books, Empire of the Beetle, and Eating Dirt at the Quesnel public library. Charlotte worked as a tree planter for 17 years and asks important questions like, Why plant trees? and, Does it work? Andrew’s book provides a fascinating context for understanding the Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic in BC that is now established in Alberta. We hope lots of people will buy and read both of these books 
Book tour promo poster
On Wednesday Laszlo dropped us at the train to Munich where we stayed at the hostel again before our flight to Vancouver the next afternoon. He had made bread for our trip and loaded us up with grapes, peppers and tomatoes from his garden, so it was a very pleasant trip, apart from delays.
Laszlo's home grown grapes
Contrary to the system at Vancouver’s airport, in Munich one must check in at the airline and get boarding passes and baggage tags before going to customs with a Carnet! So we ended up lining up twice 
However, no one lost our luggage and we didn’t have any hassles with customs re-entering Canada with the artwork this time. It was a great trip, but good to be home!
On Sunday we walked around Budapest for most of the day and had lunch downtown. The restaurant had a WiFi signal and we were able to run Skype through an iPod so Laszlo could talk to Claire’s sister Natanis in Victoria, BC.
Claire sets up the call
Laszlo & Claire, Danube River, Parliament buildings
In the evening we went to an epic opera in a grand old theatre downtown. It wove together the story of a group of Jews being rounded up in Budapest in WWII, the biblical story of Esther and present time elements, with segments of Klezmer music, song and dance.
Music college with Listz façade
The next day we explored more of Budapest on foot and watched a rehearsal of traditional and contemporary Hungarian dance with live musicians. They were excellent and though we couldn’t attend their final performance, we found a DVD of similar work.
Dance rehearsal
On Tuesday the three of us cycled to Laszlo’s other garden plot farther south on Csepel Island. In the evening we went to a wine cellar pub downtown to hear some music. Three people played violin, one accordion, a clarinet, stand up bass, and cimbalon – all playing triple time, perfectly synchronized! The place was packed with young women university students, most of whom sang along with great gusto. It was really fun.
We had heard that there were trains from Sopron to Budapest at 9 and 10 a.m. It took quite a while to pack everything up Saturday morning, so we were a bit behind and ran down the street as fast as we could with our suitcases to make the train at 10. We bought our tickets, then ran out to the platform, only to be told that the Budapest train was coming on the other side, so we had to run down the stairs and back up the other stairs with our gear.
After heaving everything into a train car, we looked around and wondered…where is everyone? A kind elderly gentleman went back to the ticket booth with Claire and found out that in fact there wasn’t a train to Budapest until 1 pm, unless we wanted to go to the bus depot and catch a bus to Győr, then train to Budapest. But that would only save about 10 minutes. So we pulled everything off the train and waited back in the station where there was a WiFi signal.
Bill uses Alan Zisman's netbook at Sopron's train station
I worked on my conference notes while Claire drew cartoon postcards of us, like this one:
cartoon © Claire Kujundzic
I looked up from my typing to see Ferenc Lakatos, the conference organizer, standing in front of me. It was nice to see him – he and his son Richard were there to meet his dad. But then Ferenc asked if we had seat tickets. No, we just had tickets to Budapest. Hmm.
He explained that we could have problems on the train without them and accompanied me back to the ticket booth. I bought two seat tickets for 360 Forints (about $2 Cdn). Not sure why these aren’t sold with the main tickets as one unit, but we were very grateful to Ferenc!
We had a very pleasant trip east on the GYSEV train, which has WiFi. Laszlo met us at the Budapest Keleti (east) station, and took us back to his place in Csepel, on the island in the Danube.
Claire & Laszlo at Budapest Keleti station
He drove the long way so we could see some of the sights, and made a fabulous dish with homemade dumplings for us.
Laszlo's home cooking
On Friday, the presentations continued on species such as Polygraphus grandiclava (on pine and cherry!), Ips typopgraphus, Dendroctonus micans, Abies sibirica, Monchamus urussovi, Anoplophora glabripennis, Leptographium sibirica, Polygraphus proximus, Dendroctonus valens, and a few natural predators.
Bill Riel of the Canadian Forest Service (Victoria, BC) shared data on the MPB’s incursion into Jack pines in northern Alberta and how this could affect woodland caribou habitat. Anton Kovalev (International Center for Study of Extreme States of Organisms, Krasnoyarsk, Russia) presented his new calculus equations to model tree resistance with more accuracy. He also measured dielectric properties of tree tissues as an indicator of a tree’s physiological state.
Hisashi Kajimura from Nagoya University in Japan, discussed the latex defenses of fig trees in response to the novel threat of ambrosia beetles which have spread through Japan over the last 10 years. Larry Kirkendall showed some gorgeous photos of ambrosia beetles in Chile that are affecting Beeches there; very cool galleries!
Hisashi Kajimura, Nagoya University, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Forest Protection Lab, Nagoya, Japan
Jon Sweeney of the Canadian Forest Service (Fredericton, NB) talked about the effects of host tree stress on foraging of Tetropium spp., and Krista Ryall of the Canadian Forest Service (Victoria, BC) presented her findings on a volatile sex pheromone in emerald ash borers that have killed millions of trees in Canada and the US. Apparently it is very hard to detect early infestation, as the trees are asymptomatic for up to 4 years.
Finally, Keith Douce (Center for Invasive Species & Ecosystem Health, University of Georgia) gave a summary of the resources available at bugwood.org, an image bank of invasive species, forestry images, insects and weeds with 1.3M records. Bugwood’s IT systems are fully integrated and can connect to databases; there are more than 145,000 images and 15,000 subjects. The site issues creative commons licenses through its Wiki system for the html, pdf and image files users can access. There’s even a mobile app for iPhone that plugs into an alert system. Very cool.
After Ferenc’s closing remarks, it was time for us to take down Claire’s artwork & repack it. Larry Kirkendall helped out and when we were done, we went back to Erhardt for supper with him and Torild Wardenær. It was a lovely way to end the week.
Bill & Larry, ready to wrap Claire's exhibit
Supper out; Ferenc Lakatos photo
Les Safranyik (Victoria, BC), Choi Won Il (Seoul) & Claire with other delegates on the park trail
With the rest of the delegates we were taken by bus on September 8 to the Irottkö park area on the Hungarian-Austrian border, northwest of Szombathely. After the previous day of sitting indoors, it was refreshing to walk below the spruce. There were places where we could observe some bark beetle damage in the park, which was interesting. From the top of the Irottkö tower on the border we saw where there used to be a clear cut swath during the cold war era, and it was a perfect site for a group photo.
Sopron IUFRO conference delegates at Irottkö tower
At the base of a dead larch tree, Sarah Smith of the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University found a big, beautiful predatory beetle! I think it’s Carabus intricatus.
A swarm of entomologists examine a dead Larch tree
Sarah Smith holds a very lively Carabus intricatus
Anthony Cognato & Sarah Smith from the Department of Entomology, Michigan State University show Claire their cool shirts at lunch!
After a hearty Hungarian lunch in a restaurant, we visited an amazing nature centre in Sarród called the Kócsagvár or Egret Castle, with thatched roofs and a design influenced by the form of egret feathers. What a gorgeous structure.
Conference organizer Ferenc Lakatos briefs delegates at the Egret Castle nature centre
Inside the nature centre
The Fertő-Hanság National Park connects Austria’s Neusiedler See National Park and Hungary’s Lake Fertő, which is the third largest lake in Central-Europe. Here we walked along a canal on the edge of a fine bird watching area.
Good bird watching here
Shannon Smith (Biology Department, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia) checks out the canal
Our last stop was at the site of the Pan-European picnicwhich took place in 1989 and led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A rather emotional place for the Hungarians and other East Europeans.
Display at the site of the Pan-European Picnic
After we got back to Sopron, everyone met for supper at Erhardt restaurant. Wow.
Supper at Erhardt; can you find Bill & Claire? (Ferenc Lakatos photo)
University tour bus
Eckehard Brockerhoff (New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Rotorua, NZ) and Ferenc Lakatos (University of Western Hungary, Sopron) opened the bark beetle conference on behalf of IUFRO on Wednesday morning. The 75 delegates came from Greece, Canada, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Algeria, USA, Italy, Belgium, Slovakia, France, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Croatia, Australia, Germany, Wales, and South Korea. Sadly, the US Forest Service had no funds to send delegates.
Ferenc, the main conference organizer, gave an overview of the current situation in Hungary. Their forests are dominated by deciduous species like oaks and beech; there are Scolytidae beetles such as S multistriatus, Xyleborus spp, and Platypus cylindrus.
Eckehard Brockerhoff & Ferenc Lakatos welcome delegates
Due to invasions, rising temperatures and decreasing precipitation, conifers have been affected in every forest in Hungary. Norway spruce gone from 27% to 13% since 1974. Beech distribution has been shrinking dramatically, and the composition and distribution of tree species has a big impact on bug diversity.
One of the most interesting things we learned at this conference was how much windstorms and drought can create ideal conditions for a bark beetle outbreak. For example, Hervé Jactel gave a presentation about what happened after Cyclone Klaus hit France in January, 2009 and affected 70% of their forests: there was a masssive outbreak of Ips sexdentatus the next year.
On a coffee break, Les Safranyik explained to us how he and other researchers realized why a large tract of conifers near the Cariboo Mountains in BC had died. A powerful wind storm had rocked the trees, not enough to knock them over, but the movement destroyed the fine roots. The trees were then more vulnerable to beetle attack.
Allan Carroll of UBC gave an interesting and somewhat disturbing presentation on Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) range expansion into northern Alberta. Whereas Lodgepole has been the primary host, it’s now starting to show up in Jack pine hybrids and Jack pines, with a projected mortality of 67% by 2020.
According to Allan, there was three times as much susceptible pine at the start of our most recent outbreak compared to a severe infestation in 1910, mainly because of fire suppression and also some selective harvesting. With the 1-2 degrees increase in mean annual temperatures since 1950, we have had a 75% increase in suitable conditions for MPB. A third of the outbreak is located beyond previous cold limitation line.
Allan predicts that lodgepole pines “with experience” will have more effective defenses than “naive” pines like the jack pines and hybrid species.
We also heard presentations on the engraver beetle in Italy’s Dolomites, spruce bark beetles (SBB), ambrosia beetles in Korea, bark beetles and long horned & borer beetles affecting wood packaging and palettes in container ships, bark beetles in Sitka spruce in Wales, and pheromone traps.
Bjørn Økland of Norway discussed the possibility of new pests entering Eurasian forests, such as the bronze birch borer, MPB (if it got into Scots pine in northern Europe, 42% of trees could be vulnerable), SBB, pinewood nematode and emerald ash borer.
Ours was the last presentation of the day – a mix of photos from the Cariboo-Chilcotin and Claire’s paintings – and it was very well received
Introducing our screen presentation; Ferenc Lakatos photo
Coralie Bertheau (Vienna) & Peter Biedermann (Bern) look at Claire's trees during a coffee break.
Just before supper, everyone was invited to what was supposedly a special organizing meeting, but actually a ruse to present Les (Laszlo) Safranyik The George Varley Award for Achievement in Forest Insect Ecology. Les, a Soproni-UBC graduate, is recently retired from the Canadian Forest Service and features prominently in Andrew Nikiforuk’s “Empire of the Beetle” along with Allan Carroll, who gave the tribute. All the delegates were there and gave Les a standing ovation.
Jean-Clauge Grégoire (Belgium), Allan Carroll (UBC), Les Safranyik (Victoria, BC), Eckehard Brockerhoff (NZ); Ferenc Lakatos photo
