Posted on 07/23/2007 8:57:22 AM PDT by george76
Gov. Bill Ritter said Wednesday that the pine beetle epidemic that has killed nearly half of the state’s lodgepole pine trees will have an “impact for generations to come” and will change the look of Colorado’s forests.
After getting a look at stands of dead trees from the air, Ritter said the outbreak is part of a natural cycle that has been encouraged by the drought, milder winters and the fact there are so many clusters of the same type and age of tree that are attractive to the beetles.
He said the epidemic can’t be stopped, only managed to reduce the risk of wildfires. That will change the look of Colorado’s forests as more pine trees die and are replaced with new ones.
About 44 percent of the state’s 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine are now infested by beetles, or about 660,000 acres.
With all but 100,000 acres of the dead trees on federal land, the bulk of the thinning falls to the U.S. Forest Service, which plans to treat 18,000 acres of dead trees this year. Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables said he wishes the agency could do more, but ...
The dry, dead trees, which have a rusty red color, pose the biggest fire risk in the year or two before their needles fall off.
(Excerpt) Read more at grandcountynews.com ...
....And it'll be blamed on Global Warming caused by the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton cabal.
Science has been the exception in the Forestry Department since the end of the '70's. The brainwashing has worked. Now perfectly rational people believe that trees will live forever if humans would only leave them alone.
My husband is a former Hotshot who fought in Yellowstone. He lost a lot of people that he knew there. I don't know how to undo so many years of propaganda. Even the Weather Channel was gratuitously selling Global Warming as the root cause of every single natural problem on Earth.
Crap. Sorry. Double clicked the “post” button.
Ritter is a liberal politician who is pandering to his base.
Many people will now lose their homes in the next few years. Remember what happened in South Lake Tahoe recently ? Homeowners who ‘illegally’ cleared brush and dead wood away from their homes now still have a home.
Many homeowners who followed the governments instructions lost their homes.
It is sad to see the politicans and lawyers with no scientific training, degrees, nor life time of experience destroy the forests and all the living things inside the forests.
The propaganda is huge. These liberals make tons of money selling it.
Sorry that your husband lost people. Please thank him for his service as a former Hotshot.
Another trick ( there are many ) is to close historial roads under the title ‘ no new roads.’ These long time forest roads also provide fire support : heavy equipment, water, supplies, other fire fighters...can respond faster to fight the wild fire and to help save lives of those fire fighters who jumped in.
IF, but it's not. The natural wildfires that would keep the forest cleared of litter and crowding have been aggressively eliminated for generations.
The artificial substitute for natural clearing - logging - has been banned for decades.
These dying forests are the result of some very unnatural interference.
[Pine beetle infestation can be stopped right in its tracks with selective cutting of the timber. Pine beetles are hard to spread when the trees aren’t thick and are spaced out. I had an outbreak on my place and we stopped it by cutting a lot of the pines. The ones that are left have grown exponentially since that cutting and are healthier.]
Not totally true. What happens is that cutting out some of the dead and undergrowth gives more moisture to the healthy trees. The major cause of beetle spread is low tolerance due to low moisture levels which weakens trees. If you recall, a few years ago the Canadians were blaming the Nasty US industrial complex for ACID RAIN. I believe this is the same thing.
I don’t know the particulars of this Colorado situation.
But I can’t help but wondering if this isn’t a replay of the Southern
California situation.
I remember about five years ago when lots of old, dead, bug-infested trees
started going up in conflagrations east of Los Angeles and down near
San Diego.
IIRC, it was on either KKLA (99.5FM) or KRLA (870 AM) that a forestry
expert related how he’d served on a major study group and had said
“if we don’t start cutting down most of the dead/dying trees, we’re
going to have a major, disasterous fire”.
Of course, there was no action taken on his prediction...it was deep-sixed
by a “strange-bedfellows” coalition of environmentalist NUTBURGERS
and homeowners that feared that even sane clearing of dead trees might
drop the value of their homesteads.
When this forestry expert related his experience, he paused once and
gave one of the longest, most anguished “sigh”s I’ve ever heard on
talk radio.
But he was just too classy to say “I told ‘em so” given his prediction that
came to pass.
The pine beetles here in eastern NC live mostly in damaged trees. (Hurricanes = damage) They’ve always been here. No one paid any attention until the multi million dollar homes (read - tourist and yankee) on the beach started losing trees. Then it became an overnight epidemic! The envirowhackos pulled the only chemical that would really kill them. You should hear the money people complain. The locals just cut the trees down and burn them. :) No diseased trees = no place for the beetles to survive! No food-they starve to death. Natural cycles.
:’D Well said!!!
Best approach is to send psychologists up there to talk to the beetles, to convince them to come out of their shells.
There are two responses to start.
First is to build a defensible space around your home. This means clearing away the dead and burnable stuff. The roof and walls should have flame restiant materials. This will also help the fire fighters save one’s home.
Second is a healthy forest. We have not used science in decades thus we are in a big mess. Logging dead trees provide jobs for small rural communities as well as removes fuel for future fires.
LOL.
Best approach is to send psychologists up there to talk to the beetles, to convince them to come out of their shells.
Of course we could drastically reduce wildfires if we were allowed to clear cut dead sections of forrest, and stop this stupid policy of replanting 2 trees for everyone we cut down. Nature has already created a way to dispense seeds and create new growth.
Similar occurance in Northern NM.
I have no confidence in the Forest Service to have the slightest idea how to promote a healthy forest. They culled all the dead trees and did massive removal in a couple areas around here. The run off and erosion was terrible, and we don’t get much rain.
I’ve done quite a bit around my land to try and delay the beetles advance. Removal of weak and small trees to reduce competition. Use of removed tree trunks (4-6” diameter to produce “terraces” on sloped land to increase water retention and reduce runoff.
Of course it all depends on the amount of precipitation we get. It was good in the winter and early spring, but dry now. Hope the monsoons gear up.
You must not have been on FR much. It's a standard FR joke for someone to sarcastically cry "Bush's fault" once in each thread.
Ah, memories. I’m an old fart and can remember those days!
Sorry, but you don’t even know what an old fart smells like unless you can conger up memories of the Andrew Sisters. Oh, Yeah!
;’)
Some of the Colorado higher areas have been getting lots of rain recently.
The monsoons even have been causing mud slides in towns like Alpine, on Independence Pass, on I-70 and hwy 6...
I hope that you get your moisture soon.
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