Posted on 07/23/2006 9:16:17 PM PDT by george76
This ski town has stepped up its campaign to battle pine beetles, which have killed countless trees and threatened others in the surrounding valley and nearby counties.
Everyone including residents, local government and giant resort operator Intrawest Corp. has been footing the bill to blunt the bugs’ impact on a swath of the state whose economy depends heavily on its scenic lands.
“The situation will get worse. It’s one of those things that grows exponentially each year,”...
During a Front Range outbreak in the 1970s, the government launched a $20 million program to control the beetles.
But now, perhaps more than ever, property owners and municipalities have been shelling out the money required to thwart the beetles and deal with the damage they cause.
The U.S. Forest Service is more likely to be providing training and advice on managing beetle kill areas.
“This infestation is breaking all the records,” said Mike Ricketts, winter sports administrator from the Sulphur Ranger District of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. ``It's unprecedented.''
``All of our property tax and then some for the last three years has gone to the pine beetle mitigation,'' ...
(Excerpt) Read more at grandcountynews.com ...
Check this out!
This aerial photo is an example of some of the ongoing attempts to handle the pine beetle epidemic in Grand County.
The area shown is along the north shore of Lake Granby. The area to the right... has undergone “mitigation” with hundreds of diseased trees having been cut down and removed.
Much of the densely-forested area to the left shows the characteristic rusty-red color of trees that are either dead or dying of beetle infestation. (Photo by Tonya Bina)
Time, and past time, to tell the ecowhacks to STFU, and reinstitute aerial spraying.
"...near the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, the beetles already have caused far more damage to the landscape."
Where's this happening at, George???
I agree, but I also think the government claims to own too much land in the West which it doesn't take good care of. Reinstitute the Homestead Act. The land belongs to the people, not the government,
a place called Arrowhead was devastated by the beetles after a moratorium on all tree cutting started in the '70's.
I think the lower Sequoia is next to turn brown ,it has already started showing signs in the logging protected areas.
they say it comes down to "trees per acre". The more trees per acre the less moistre per tree, means not enough sap for the tree to protect itself with. The answer is not poison, it is thinning
Grand Lake, Colorado is north of I-70, east of Steamboat Springs, and near the western entrance to the RMNP.
This is in Colorado, where it is a perennial problem throughout the state, and I imagine the entire Rock Mountains.
When the beetle killed trees near Vail start to burn, Vail will be losing many expensive homes.
The massive numbers of dead trees one can see as they drive on I-70 is huge.
Those homeowners should get together to create some defensible spaces to help the fire fighters when the fires come...not if the fires come.
IMHO.
How are the fires in California ?
Is Big Bear still worried ?
I assume that stands for Rocky Mountain Nationalized Park, right? Is this the same bark beetle that's been killing our trees in the Sierra-Nevada range for the past decade?
Yes.
" Rocky Mountain Nationalized Park..."
We use to be able to hunt...
It went from our land, to the land of many uses... now government land.
The problem in a nutshell is Mother Nature reasserting her authority over the ponderosa forest. A natural pine forest contains a few large, widely separated mother trees, and a healthy mix of smaller trees of varying ages growing in between them. In a healthy ponderosa forest, you ought to be able to see clearly in any direction for a hundred yards.
However, the forests of the American West were mostly clear-cut between 1850 and 1920. The dominant mother trees were the first ones targeted. What grew up to replace them was a thickly forested monoculture, all of the trees of about the same age, and without any larger trees to compete with them for light and water. More trees were able to grow much larger and more closely spaced than ever before.
But the story does not end there, of course. The Forest Service and the timber companies were happy to see a denser forest, but they soon found that it was more susceptible to fire. Therefore, we have had eighty years of suppression of fires that ought to have been allowed to burn naturally, and if the forest had been healthy in the first place, they would have done no lasting harm. In fact, a healthy forest requires periodic fires to clear out underbrush on the forest floor, and if this does not happen, it increases the risk of crown fires making it to the treetops later on. The thick bark of the pines protects them from the low temperature ground fires.
Now we have the worst of all possible worlds: a thick forest of large mature trees of eighty to a hundred fifty years old. They have reached the saturation point, crowding each other out for resources. The pine trees fight the ips beetles by producing abundant sticky sap to trap them and drown them, but it requires plenty of water and sunlight to do so. Now they are all unhealthy and susceptible both to fire and beetles.
The situation was summed up by a forest ranger I once heard, who said: "Fire, bugs or logging, pick your favorite." We decided on logging and have taken over five hundred trees out of our land. The National Forest immediately adjacent has also been heavily logged, but not clear-cut, leaving a few large healthy trees to be the mothers of the next generation. Twenty years ago I would have been aghast, but now I applaud them. Yes, it looks bad for a couple of years afterwards, but I have seen tracts that were selectively logged ten years ago and you cannot tell they were ever touched. It's a little like getting a haircut.
Perversely, the areas that are closest to civilization are the most likely to have been clear-cut in bygone days, and thus the unhealthiest now. That is why the urban-wildland interface has been the scene of such terrible fire damage in recent years. The really wild, inaccessible forests that never were logged are still in pretty good shape.
This country needs the Forest Service to approve selective logging over huge swathes of the West, and soon, or there will be ever more horrible forest fires. The construction industry could use cheaper lumber prices too. When the logging is done, naturally-occurring fires ought to be allowed to burn themselves out for the health of the forest, unless they threaten structures. If this is done, the beetle problem will take care of itself.
We have lost a lot of our trees down here in Arizona, but in our part of the forest the beetles have pretty much run their course. The sickliest trees are long since dead, while the rest have successfully fought them off and are a nice looking green with the recent rains. Some spots lost 90% of their trees, but in most places it was on the order of 20-40%, and the forest is healthier for it. The orange needles on the dead trees look like hell for a couple of years, but you don't notice them so bad when the needles finally fall off.
Bring on the logging trucks!
-ccm
These suckers ?
http://www.capehoperanch.com/beetles.pdf
-ccm
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