Posted on 04/26/2008 12:01:29 PM PDT by chessplayer
I'm not trying to say there isn't a problem but I think we need better evidence. When I scan over large tracts of CO I see mostly deep green forests. But if the sat photos are old that doesn't mean much. I do know from first hand observation that the hills east of the Sandia Mtns in NM lost almost all the pinon pine to some beetle leaving hillsides virtually covered with standing fuel for fires. Given all the homes that are built throughout those hills it looked like a scary situation to me.
As for Rcky Mtn Nat Park it has had a high fuel load for years, long before this latest beetle infestation. The Nat Park Service ignored it for years but has tried to do some mitigation in the last ten or so. Problem is most of it is too rugged to cover with ground crews and I think they are leary of doing intentional burns in rugged areas with lots of fuel.
A power boat creates waves in front of forests devastated by pine beetles on Shadow Mountain Reservoir in Grand County.
It was around 2000 when foresters in Grand County recognized the pine beetle outbreak as a true epidemic, rather than one of the small outbreaks common in any pine forest
The mountain pine beetle, which is expected to destroy up to 90 percent of the lodgepole pine forests in Eagle County, has definitely done its damage in Grand County .
Within three to five years of dying, a lodgepole pine is so deteriorated and dry that it can’t be sold as commercial lumber — and you can see much of this useless wood left behind.
Many homes, surrounded by the skeletal remains of long-dead pine trees, look like the sole, untouched survivors of cataclysmic fires. Grand Lake resident Bob Means says that even after spraying all the trees around his house, they still had to cut several down.
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The dead trees will burn. The pine beetle will die off to barely sustainable numbers, the forest will restart and rinse and repeat.
There are a lot of structures in the way though. But if have driven through Grand County Colorado, it is a forgone conclusion, thousands of acres are going to burn. If they started logging like hell it might help, but the housing slump says that won't happen.
The Forest Circus could issue permits to harvest firewood that way private contractors could benefit as well as their potential customers. But they refused to do that in the past over here in Larimer county. It’s a waste and a danger.
It is a waste.
You are right, the woods look ok up Pouder Canyon. I have some ground west of Trinidad and that looks good, a few red trees here and there.
Aspens are having a tough time in some parts of the state as well.
These folks in Grand cty need to get that standing dead cleaned up around their homes and there are a lot of homes over there now. The rest of the forest is Uncle Sugar's problem. If they want to waste it I expect they won't be asking us peons what we think.
—thanks for the ping—almost posted this, but I’m in SW Wisconsin now where too much rain and cool is the latest catastrophe-—
Or not. Why should I care if this century's forrest dies. Forrests are always changing.
Minnesota got snow too ?
—and the problem with spraying is it has to be done at a fairly precise time and over several hundred million acres—
Wow! Worse the the epidemic I saw in 1986 around West Yellowstone on the Targhee NF...two years later, most of Yellowstone NP was turned to ashes...how the enviros can delude themselves that this is natural is beyond me....course these same people are more worried about global warming then radical Islam....liberals have truly become a culture of death..
Liberals like the idea of massive fires near small towns because they think that we will be driven off.
Like banning fishing, hunting, mining, logging...has worked.
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