Posted on 08/27/2007 8:19:00 AM PDT by george76
An unstoppable wave could devastate 3 million acres of lodgepole pines.
Mountain pine beetles are obliterating a forest that stretches from British Columbia to Mexico, and in the process are creating a hazard for fire, public safety and water supply.
“What we’re looking at is an entire lodgepole pine forest dying right before our eyes,”...
Severson described the problem to the Colorado Water Congress at its convention last week....
More than 22 million acres eventually will be destroyed in the American West. Meanwhile, the beetles are making their way across Canada toward the Atlantic Ocean as well.
The lack of logging has created a higher proportion of large, older trees in the forests. They’re all about the same age and equally vulnerable.
The damage is spreading faster than in the past, with 660,000 acres of trees destroyed in 2006 alone, and this year’s total still being counted.
The U.S. Forest Service has brought other agencies into a cooperative effort, but can’t move fast enough to contain the problem, Carroll said. Private landowners are doing most of the work of thinning trees so far.
About 15 years prior to the disastrous 1988 Yellowstone fire, there was a massive beetle infestation...
“We need to manage forests for a healthy forest to reduce threat of fire,” ... Sen. Jack Taylor...cited a blow-down of 20,000 acres of trees in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness area of the Routt National Forest associated with the October 1997 blizzard that buried Southeastern Colorado in snow.
“It was so jack-strawed, even the game couldn't get through,” ... There was a weakening of trees and the trees started turning red. ... We need to get what wood we can, get some value out of it, not leave kindling for a big fire."
(Excerpt) Read more at chieftain.com ...
The Greenies lawyers make tons of money by filing lawsuits; they do not apparently care about the envirnoment.
“The U.S. Forest Service has brought other agencies into a cooperative effort, but can’t move fast enough to contain the problem, Carroll said. Private landowners are doing most of the work of thinning trees so far.”
This quote underlines the problem. The Forest Service brings in other agencies. The private landowner brings in a CHAINSAW.
In Canada they are cutting this timber as fast as they can. They do not let stupid preservationist keep injuctions from harvesting timber.
PING
Many of the foresters in the forest service want to use science to solve this problem, but are prevented by all of the Sierra Club lawsuits.
Private land owners can solve the problem if they are awake. With ninety percent ? of the dead trees on public lands, the massive fires will blow into private lands...killing everything.
"It was so jack-strawed, even the game couldn't get through,""...kinda like Blair's foreign policy." [rimshot!]
The Sierra Club does not care if the trees die , or if the wildfire burns millions of acres because this is an act of nature.
If a couple hundred or thousand houses burn down also, so be it. It is a natural occurance.
However, if there are then mudslides that affect the spawning of the cutthroat trout then it is a problem.
Then its BUSH’s fault.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yeah, I know pretty much the whole phenomenon. It’s just a sickening waste of everything as far as I’m concerned.
These massive fire have, are, and will also pollute the air and the water supplies.
The heat is so high and for such a long duration that it kills everything in the soil.
Ash will kill fish, turtle, frogs...that depend on oxygen in the water.
and ...
Will DDT kill these beetles?
“In one of those unintended consequences, they got the bark beetle to take care of the deadwood in the forests for them.”
It actually kills the live tree because it kills the cambium layer(the live part between the wood and the bark) that conducts water and nutrients betweeen the leaves and the roots of the tree. It is not an insect that bores into the tree after the bark is burned off by a forest fire.
So what you end up with are forests of dead standing timber which is much more suseptable to lightning strikes and therefore hugh forest fires.
Yep.
Bring back DDT....:))
Came in from China, right?
Forests evolve. They recover from the burn, brush grows, new trees grow up, get thick, beetles come in and make them susceptible to a burn, the burn occurs, beetles get burned, brush grows, etc...
One "solution" being considered in Canada has been the possible introduction of the beetle's main predator in Asia -- a wasp of some kind that feeds on the beetle's eggs.
I’m sorry to hear that.
Having spent my entire life on mountain full of trees, I’m quite fond them.
I imagine woodpeckers, if they can get to them.
I blame Yoko.
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