Oh my God...they can’t grow’em up....and for God’s sake don’t cut’em down! We are all going to die!
While the impact has been enormous, Mangold said, the mountain pine beetle is a native insect that, along with fire, does play a role in the regeneration of lodgepole pines.
The pines have a hard cone that won’t open without a hot fire, he said. When the cones open, they dump out seed, creating a thick forest of trees of the same age. When the trees hit 80 to 90 years old, they weaken and become susceptible to the mountain pine beetle. The beetles kill the trees, creating more dry fuel for those fires, he said.