One of the most iconic photo spots in the Canadian Rockies has to be Spirit Island which is located in the middle of Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park.  This island had been known for hundreds of years to the First Nation Tribes and early settlers, but it really began to become popular after photographer Peter Gales took a photo of it for Kodak and hung it in Grand Central Station in New York in the 1960’s.  Since then, thousands of visitors a year take the boat out to the middle of the lake for shots of this magnificent little island surrounded on all sides by jade colored water and towering glacier carved peaks.  If you have been putting off a trip to Maligne Lake for someday in the distant future, you might want to think about heading up much sooner.  In fact, if you don’t make the trip this year, it might be too late.  Maligne Lake is currently being threatened and time is quickly running out.  It’s already too late for much of Jasper National Park, and it’s beginning to look like Maligne Lake might be next.

I discovered what was happening just last Summer when I made my second visit to Jasper National Park.  It all started when I thought I would just drive my Prius over to Oxbow Bend in Wyoming to get out from under the smokey skies here in Southern California last August.  But when I arrived, the smoke was worse instead of better.  So I drove North to Glacier….and it was covered in smoke.  So I drove North to Banff….and a fire broke out just after I arrived and it was the worst smoke I had seen thus far.  So I continued up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper.

As I was driving down out of the Icefields Parkway, I came over a ridge and my heart suddenly stopped.  I had been to Jasper three years earlier and had noticed a dead tree here and there, but as I pulled the car over, my jaw dropped.  Entire hillsides….HUNDREDS of acres of trees were dead or dying. If I had to guess, maybe 100 million trees had died just within the last couple of years.   How was this possible?

After checking online, I found that the same bark beetle infestation that had wiped out over 150 million trees in the Sierra Nevada range here in California was now making its way through the Canadian Rockies.  One article mentioned that the number of beetles is currently more than 10 times the normal amount and that the devastation is happening from the Yukon all the way down to the Mexican border.   While these beetles typically fulfill an important role in our ecosystem by getting rid of weaker or dying trees, these bug populations have now exploded and are moving unchecked through our forests at an alarming rate.

As I drove into the town of Jasper, I grew more and more depressed. The Pyramid and Patricia Lakes were both surrounded by dead trees, and over half of the trees in town were already gone. Panicking now about the state of Maligne Lake, I headed out on Maligne Lake Road and it wasn’t any better. Entire mountainsides in all directions were covered in dying trees. I drove on past Medicine Lake which was devastated by a fire a few years ago, and finally reached the lake and ran down to the boat house. For some reason, the devastation had not fully reached the lake. There were several dead trees that could be seen in patches around the lake, but nothing like the devastation back in town.

I immediately sent a text to my photography buddy, Eric and told him that if he wanted to shoot Maligne Lake in this lifetime, he had better get a move on. It really looked like this could be the last year to shoot green trees around the lake. Worse still…those trees ON Spirit Island were now at risk. By next August, every tree surrounding Maligne Lake could be dead or dying, inlcluding those found on the island itself.  We immediately began to make plans to head back in September and we have recently returned after a 10 day trip through Banff, Assiniboine, Yoho, Jasper and Robson.

While some of this massive die-off might be seen as Nature’s way of dealing with climate change, I haven’t read ANYTHING about the fight to actually get rid of these beetles or at least kill them off to a reasonable level. If no one is actually trying to come up with a deterrent, my fear is that the rest of the Canadian Rockies will quickly be taken over by these bugs. If 60 percent of the trees surrounding Jasper can disappear in just under a year, what chance to the other parks have?  What will Jasper, Banff, Yoho and Assiniboine look like without trees?   Undoubtedly, other trees will grow in time, but we are talking about 2 generations before that may or may not occur. And what is the net loss to our planet if every conifer on the North American Continent is killed off?  Are we just going to stand by and watch 10 billion trees die?

I suppose those are weightier issues than losing an opportunity to spend time camping in a pristine forest and to be able to continue to shoot the beautiful green mountainsides in the Canadian Rockies, but it still makes my blood run cold to think about.  If Maligne Lake goes brown next year, I don’t think I could go back.  And the fire danger….a couple of well placed lightning strikes and the rockies could be burning for months.  I had planned to return to Maligne Lake and to many other locations around the Canadian Rockies….but if all of the trees die off…I don’t think I could ever go back.

Currently, it looks like ecologists are divided about what to do.  If I was in charge of Jasper tourism, I would be spending every last dime in an effort to find some sort of biological weapon to use against these beetles.  I am obviously no biologist and I am not qualified to say what should be done here, but I can’t believe that in the year 2018 the national forest service and the governments of Canada and the U.S. are just going to sit by and watch 10 billion trees die without making an all out effort to stop the destruction.

All of that aside, Maligne Lake is just now beginning to feel the effects of this current infestation.  If I had to put a number on it, I would say that 10-20 percent of the trees surrounding the lake are already gone.  But the area just outside of the town of Jasper…stretching back towards the Icefields,  I think it’s more like 70 percent.  On our way to Maligne a few weeks ago, we stopped at Athabasca Falls and I had been shooting for a while before I noticed that the ridge behind the falls was already almost completely gone.  When you look at this shot, picture another 20 ridges looking like this except worse, and you’ll begin to get an idea of how scary this situation has become…for home owners, businesses, nature lovers, campers and of course, landscape photographers.

This could easily be what both sides of Maligne look like in August of 2019.  And ultimately, those trees out on Spirit Island will go as well.

Then what?  The guests will stop coming, the forest will most likely burn during the first major thunderstorm, and there will be nothing but devastation left for the next what? 50-100 years?

Here is what it looks like now around the lake.  This was taken about halfway between the dock and Spirit Island.  Again…maybe 10-20 percent of the trees surrounding the lake are already beginning to go…

The area back near the dock is beginning to go first.

 

It should be pointed out that there are entire hillsides surrounding the Lake that are currently in pristine condition.  But the destruction is literally right on the door step of Maligne.  The hostel that we spent the night in back in Maligne Canyon is was completely surrounded by dead trees.   On the way in to the lake you pass hundreds of acres of dead trees.  So looks can be deceiving.  It may look like Maligne Lake has dodged a bullet, but you have only to drive behind Jasper to Pyramid Lake or Patricia Lake to see the complete devastation that is now surrounding both lakes.  A few trees here and there have survived but the mountains behind the lakes are now covered in dull orange rather than vibrant green.

At any rate, the purpose of this article was just to give everyone a heads up.  If you want to experience Lake Malgine surrounded by trees, this might be the last year for many years to come.  And once those trees are gone on Spirit Island….

One of the great ironies in the Canadian Rockies has been the name of Maligne Lake.  In French, it translates to simply “bad” or worse “malignant.”  How sad that the name of this incredibly beautiful lake has now become apropos.