A Few Years Left For Medicine Bow Lodgepole Pines - USFS: "Take A Good Look Now"

[hatrack]

Foresters thought they had the mountain pine beetle figured out. But one by one, it keeps chewing up expectations. First, there was the idea that the beetles wouldn't attack trees less than 80 years old, about 7 or 8 inches in diameter. They have done so; with so many beetles looking for food, they will settle for trees as small as 5 inches across.

Then there was the saw that lodgepole and limber pines near the timberline were safe. They aren't. Warmer winters have allowed beetle larvae to survive in trees at high altitude.

There was the adage that healthy trees were resistant. That one went out the window too. Healthy trees are succumbing just as quickly as sickly ones.

Right now, it seems, all bets are off. Adriene Holcomb, a Laramie-based U.S. Forest Service forester, has been offering dire warnings to her seasonal workers in the Medicine Bow National Forest. "Take a good look now," she tells them, "because you're not going to see forests like this again in your lifetime."

EDIT

http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2007/09/09/featured_story/01top_09-09-07.txt

[brokensymmetry]

1. K&R. I guess Earth will become a cinder.

A burnt out cinder, with a few miserable
survivors picking at the carcass.

I didn't have to be this way.

[mike_c]

2. who on earth made predictions like that...?

That's ridiculous. No one who knows anything about Dentroctonus beetles would predict that they wouldn't attack healthy, young, or high elevation trees. They have done all of these things in the past. MPB and SPB (southern pine beetle) interactions with forests are complex, but hardly anyone seriously doubts any longer that the management strategies we've pursued for the last 100 years or so have led directly to the present situation. The biggest culprits are fire exclusion and changing tree species dominance (the latter is more relevant in the south than the west, but the former is a major factor in the west).

The Medicine Bow is going to burn, as are most of the forests in northwestern Colorado and western Wyoming. When I was out there this summer I saw whole watersheds in which most trees were standing snags-- and not just a few of them. The MPB outbreak is the threshold those forests cannot reverse course over. Most are going to burn, sooner or later, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. There are not enough loggers in America to get the fuel out soon enough, and doing so would only compound the management problems in the long run.

I'm awfully glad I don't own a beautiful house in the woods in Colorado.

[hatrack]

3. Denizens of the Bush Administration's Forest Service made those predictions, that's who

And we should be surprised by the absurdity of their claims . . . why?