Ips beetles, or more commonly referred to as engraver beetles, are one of the most commonly encountered bark beetles of coniferous trees. More information has been written about this group of bark beetles than any other genus of Scolytidae (family of bark beetles) except possibly Dendroctonus. Most species of Ips breed in slash, broken, fallen, or dying conifers. Some species, however, are capable of attacking, killing, and breeding in healthy trees. To data, the spruce beetle, Dendroctus rufipennis, is the most important insect pest of Alaska's spruce stands. More than 2.3 million acres of Alaska spruce forests have been infested in the last eight years. There is a wealth of information about the spruce bark beetle in Alaska and most is available from the Sbexpert System (http://www.fsl.orst.edu/usfs/sbexpert/): A knowledge-based decision-support system for spruce beetle management. Ips beetles, although commonly encountered in Alaska's boreal forests, have seldom been considered a 'problem'. In recent years, however, there has been a noticeable increase in tree killing by Ips beetles in interior and south-central Alaska's white and Lutz spruce forests. The engraver species most commonly associated with this tree killing is Ips perturbatus. This 'increase' in I. perturbatus activity is thought to be a reflection of increased spruce beetle-caused mortality, increased forest management, and the increase in mean annual temperature which has been occurring for at least 80 years in south-central and interior Alaska.