For years now, towns in the Mountain West have watched as the green needles of their surrounding lodgepole pine forests turned a burnt orange. That orange signifies the tree’s death from pine bark beetle, a native pest whose populations have been boosted by climate change, resulting in the killing of enormous swaths of trees across the West. After a while those orange needles eventually fall, but the trees remain standing, looking like so many giant grey toothpicks until a storm blows them over or a fire takes them out.
Towns have tried to combat the bark beetle in various ways, mostly ineffective. But results from a 2012 survey of Coloradoforests (PDF), released Feb. 8, shows the pine beetle epidemic continues to slow, after reaching a peak in 2008. Last year, it only spread to 31,000 new acres in the state in 2012, whereas in 2011, 140,000 new acres were affected.
But the survey also has some bad news — for another kind of mountain evergreen, the spruce. In 2012, 183,000 new acres in the state were affected by spruce beetle, mostly in southern forests like the Rio Grand and San Juan national forests. Spruce beetles can attack Engelmann spruce, a high alpine species, and blue spruce, which tends to grow in lower elevations, closer to water. The beetles tend to go after spruce trees downed in storms, but they’re also going after live trees, as the press release from the survey states:
“Once the populations of spruce beetles build up in the fallen trees, the stressed trees surrounding them offer little resistance to attack. Similar to mountain pine beetle, the increase in spruce beetle activity is due to factors that increase tree stress, including densely stocked stands, ongoing drought conditions and warmer winters.”
Forest managers are already receiving questions on how they will manage this latest outbreak. There’s long been a push to turn the dead trees into timber, which spurs jobs and rural economies and reduces fuel loads — but it only works if the trees can be felled and used soon enough. As HCN noted in 2010, efforts to log and sell beetle-killed timber in Colorado floundered due to a lack of a market for the wood.
This time, foresters seem to think, could be different. From the release:
“The forest products industry is better positioned as mills come on line to take advantage of trees being removed from forested lands across Colorado. The U.S. Forest Service, Colorado State Forest Service and partners are working to provide a reliable and predictable supply of biomass for new markets.”
In November, a shuttered lumber mill near High Country News, in Montrose, Colo., was recently purchased and reopened. At the time, Senator Mark Udall spoke about its potential to process beetle kill. “The reopened Montrose sawmill has the potential to support good-paying, stable jobs in the community, and to give forest health managers a powerful tool to address beetle-killed trees and fuel-load reduction,” Udall said.
Here’s hoping.
Stephanie Paige Ogburn was the online editor for High Country News. She recently moved to a new position at ClimateWire. Her Twitter handle is @spogburn.
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