However, I imagine most of it will be left to nature’s own devices.(Is it the lodgepole pine that the cones burst open during a fire to reseed the area?)
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Most of these areas were never replanted after they burned in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The basic understanding of reforestation was in its infancy at that time. The guy in the article you cite is disenguenuous. He is insinuating that the replanting of the logging in the 1970’s thru the 1990’s is somehow responsible for the current situation. This is untrue. The trees planted after logging 30-40 years ago are only 30-40 years old. These are not the trees being attacked in the current epidemic.
As I stated in my last reply to this article http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1498422/posts the trees around Vail and other areas are 100+ years old. They resprouted after the fires 100 years ago as you suspected: Lodgepole pine has a sap coated (ie serrotinus) cone that opens after disturbance like wildfire.
So is it really that these trees are just dieing of old age? (The beatles only can thrive in weak trees?)