Neil,
I read the same article with great interest.
I first saw the devastation caused by the pine beetle while we were building Sagebrush, in interior British Columbia, beginning back about 2006-07. You can see massive swaths of beautiful pine forest decimated on drives between Merritt-Kamloops, Merritt-Kelowna and Merritt-Vancouver. I can't remember the name of the course, but there's one in Kamloops that lost every pine tree. Very startling, really.
I'm working at Kelowna Golf and Country Club now, where they spend quite a bit of money spraying the most impressive pine trees on the property in an effort to keep the beetle away. This has only been mildly successful (and relatively expensive) to this point. There is a question, relative to successful beetle mutations, whether it's worth continuing to spray at Kelowna.
I was also interested in planting some native pine species at the new Derrick Club, in Edmonton. As you may recall from the National Geographic article, experts are trying to create a "break" in the pine forest in Alberta. Pine forests have been removed and burned there in an effort to stop the beetle from moving further east. So, pine might be out of the question at the Derrick Club unfortunately. These are some very beautiful trees this bug is destroying.