[colorcountry]

If only they had done this in Cedar Breaks National Monument 25 years ago when it started, perhaps we wouldn't be suffering this outbreak now, and maybe we wouldn't have a National Monument that looks like this:

[george76]

This is a national shame and problem.

[ScubieNuc]

I was just out West. I traveled through the Big Horn Mountains and through the Shoshone River valley to the West entrance of Yellowstone and there are thousands of acres of trees turned brown by the beetle invasion.

I talked to one elderly gentleman, who said that this whole sale killing by beetles happened before down in New Mexico and Colorado before World War II. The big problem apparently isn’t the loss of trees (which eventually come back), but the HUGE fire danger.

While I was camping in the Shoshone River valley, they told us that their greatest concern was fire. Since there really was only one way out of the valley, you could have a major disaster with large loss of life if a fire ever took off in that valley.

This concern was highlighted by the fact that they were more worried about a forest fire then they were bear attacks.

As a side note: is it known that DDT could have been used to kill off the beetles, or is that just an assumption?

Sincerely