Pine beetles have killed more than 1 million acres of Colorado forests

By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Originally published 11:13 a.m., January 14, 2008

Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado will be dead within three to five years, killed in a mountain pine beetle infestation unprecedented in Colorado, forestry officials announced this morning.

In 2007 alone, the infestation spread across 500,000 more high-elevation acres in the state, reaching well into the Front Range, with beetles killing trees in Boulder, Larimer, Gilpin, Chaffee, Clear Creek and Lake Counties.

That brings the total dead and dying acreage in the state to more than 1 million, which the U.S. Forest Service's regional supervisor, Rick Cables, called "a huge, unprecedented event" with major social and economic impacts on the state.

Perhaps most at stake are the state's water supplies – now at growing threat of sediment-clogging from a lack of soil cover and the potential for forest fires as the dying forests dry out.

Also at risk: recreation, where campers and skiers will be increasingly faced with spending their time amid browning or needle-less trees.

Backcountry hikers, too, will need to be more cautious about falling trees. Mountain town economies could also be hurt by the browning backdrop, which might be less alluring to visitors.

The latest size of the spread was calculated in recent aerial surveys, the results of which were released at a morning press conference in Golden.

The extent of the spread came as a surprise even to scientists who have studied the problem for years and warned Coloradans repeatedly about the seriousness of the infestation by the tiny beetle.

"We were surprised by the spread into high-latitude forests – it was very uncharacteristic for the mountain pine beetle to go that high up in elevation," said Susan Gray of the Forest Service.

Gray said the prediction of a complete die-off within three to five years is based on the infestation's current rate of spread and intensity. She said it covers the entire range of the tree in Colorado and southern Wyoming.

In other places, including parts of Grand County, the pine beetle has so ravaged the forest that the infestation is finished, "because the host trees are already dead," Gray said.

Cables, however, emphasized that what is occurring is a natural event, and has been fueled by the lack of age differences in lodgepole forests. He compared the situation to having a human population made up entirely of people in their 70s and 80s, when disease begins to affect large numbers.

                A healthy stand of lodgepole pine on the north flank of Twin Sisters Peak in RMNP 

"Mountain pine beetles are an agent of regeneration," Cables said.

He said the die-off is a reminder for forest managers of the need to use controlled fire and other means to create a "diversity of age classes" so that "one insect or one pathogen cannot destroy an entire forest at once."

Trying to stop or even slow the infestation is a fool's errand, scientists have said, and repeated today. The acreage is far too massive to stop the beetles and even the cold weather this winter hasn't been "cold enough for long enough" to kill the beetles, Gray said.

Instead, local communities, landowners and the Forest Service are targeting pockets where forests, if left to die, would pose a fire risk to homes, towns and water supplies. But those efforts total just tens of thousands of acres — not the more than 1 million under siege.

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