Posted on 01/14/2008 10:08:55 AM PST by rellimpank
GOLDEN — Federal and state forestry officials say at current rates, mountain pine beetles will kill the majority of Colorado's large-diameter lodgepole pine forests within three to five years.
In a news conference this morning, Regional Forester Rick Cables and Jeff Jahnke, the Colorado State Forester, announced the results of the 2007 aerial survey of the state's forests.
The survey concluded that the beetle infestation in 2007 claimed 500,000 new acres of trees, bringing the total number acres of up to 1.5 million since the first signs of the outbreak 1996.
Officials described the infestation as a "catastrophic event" that has now crossed into Front Range areas.
"Dead and dying trees that were isolated to 5 northern
Colorado counties last year can now be seen in some Front Range areas as well as southern Wyoming," Cables said in a statement released at the U.S. Forest Service regional office in Golden. "The bark infestation has spread dramatically," he said. "This is an unprecedented event."
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Thought you might be interested in this.
Is this the same beetle that is killing the trees in the Smokies?
have you heard what their doing with the ash tree logs, etc...
burning them?
Just wondering if there’s any commercial use for them or if they have to be destroyed completely to stop the spread.
Kinda makes the Gypsy moth liike like a pushover!
There was a nasty outbreak of pine beetle blight in northern Georgia, eastern Tennessee and southern North Carolina a few years back. It petered out before it got south to the area between Macon and Savannah — which was a lucky break, because losing trees around there would have led to a sharp rise in the price of all kinds of paper products.
I live in the mountains NW of Golden. This year I had 15 lodgepole pines on my property killed by beetles. The beetles cause grayish staining that causes vertical streaks in the wood so you can spot the evidence that the trees were killed by beetles as soon as you cut the tree down. I cut the trees up for fire wood :)
I’ve used the Bayer product on my Weeping Willow in our back yard to protect from the beetles that took our neighbors Willow. It’s pretty expensive, but this tree was planted the day that someone dear to us was lost, so in this instance the price isn’t a consideration. Thus far, over three years, it’s worked beautifully. What was once a skinny twig that fit into my SUV 3 years ago, is now thicker than my thigh and 20”x20”.
I wouldn't claim that Wiki is not useful, but i've never considered it to be a source of facts because the owners of the site take no responsibility of content. Just looking up for yourself is fine, and I do that myself, but if I were writing a scientific paper to be published, Wiki is the last place I'd admit to using as a source.
I blame Yoko.
It looks like they are on a track. But I think that’s abbey road.
Insects were the old enemy as well...Zyklon-B was originally developed and tested as an insecticide.
From what I’ve read up on the bayer product, it works only when others fail. IOW, when larvae try to feed on the tree, they get poisoned. Normal insecticides can’t get inside the tree to kill the larvae. The down side to this is that it needs to be poured around the drip line every 12 weeks during active growing season.
That's fine. Scientific papers are supposed to be original or first-source research. That's not what Wiki is for.
For finding out if pine beetles kill trees, it's more than adequate.
I think wiki is more reliable than you local newspaper.
excuse me. ...your local newspaper
Whoops, Beetles, NOT Beatles.
Thats a good question, I really haven't heard. The independent tree guys are taking them down and just grinding them up into sawdust.
The state is telling people who have places in northern Michigan and the upper peninsula to NOT take the logs up there for burning in their fireplaces. Evidently there is a new outbreak in the U.P. which they figure was caused by infected logs taken up there........
"Because the logs become unusable after they die off. They rot from the inside out."
Only if they're left standing for years. They die from under-bark damage, and prompt harvesting would yield good poles.
From their disclamer page...
The structure of the project allows anyone with an Internet connection to alter its content. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.
Essentially the same could be said of any publisher of any kind. Even "non-hobbyist", paper-media writers and publishers frequently err and/or publish false information for a variety of reasons. Scientific papers are not inherently more accurate either.
Printing something in black ink on white paper doesn't give it any more nor less inherent credibility than publishing it on the Internet.
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