Insect pest outbreaks are considered to be one of the most damaging classes of natural forest disturbances. The severity of such outbreaks is rapidly increasing in recent years due to global warming process, which affects pests reproduction rate and natural distribution range. Forest management faces new challenges in dealing with the rising economic effects of these disturbances. Though many studies have been conducted to date in the field of tree phytophages ecology, the issues of estimating economic damage and the formation of mechanisms for its minimization have been poorly studied. The following paper presents a review of the studies dedicated to the problem of insect pests forest disturbances, classified by its localization. The study area includes mostly boreal forests located in some European countries, the USA, Canada and Russia. Our study reviews the range of instruments applied to prevent disturbances mentioned above and mitigate corresponding negative consequences. Despite there is some theoretical framework to analyze the economic aspects of invasive forest pests activity, it is still not applicable to the solution of forest disturbances issues caused by the insects.