I'm not a forester or a biologist but it seems to me the way to get rid of pests is to either kill them or starve them out. The simple truth is, some species need to be extinct (note to pres. Bush - veto funding of the US Senate - or at least their cafeterias).
For reasons unknown, environmentalists prefer to see large tracts of forest laid to waste, to release their lifetime of CO2 absorption back into the atmosphere through natural decay or by fire rather than maintain forest health where living trees would do exactly the opposite.
I have traveled the infested areas of central and eastern Oregon, and they are not small acreages of dead trees here and there, but rather tracts of hundreds of square miles.
The tonnage of CO2 being released by this volume of decaying and burning biomass has to be enormous.
It is heartbreaking to see the miles of brown, dead pines, in the hills of AZ. What used to be a beautiful forest, is now acres and acres and acres, of brown, dead trees. Just standing there, with no plans to remove the dry, rotted timber.