This post was the last one I was working on before I got really busy. It's a it dated, but here it is anyway.
You can download the report in a PDF (direct link) here.
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A new report gives the low down on the range of beetles devouring Colorado's conifers, as well as declining aspen.
As for the causes:
Which sounds to me like he might be referring to those "decadent" old growth stands. I'm not convinced that any new logging regime is going to change this situation. From what I've seen, when the trees, living or dead, are logged, they come back in the same, dense, single age stands to which Bob Cain refers. And then we have a never ending cycle until the seed stock is gone.
Moreover, no reference to global warming in the article, which with warming temperatures has reduced the winter freezes that kept the beetles in check. Nothing to be done about that for a long time.
You can download the report in a PDF (direct link) here.
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A new report gives the low down on the range of beetles devouring Colorado's conifers, as well as declining aspen.
Some 643,000 acres of lodgepole forest - about 42 percent of Colorado's total - were infested last year by mountain pine beetles, said Jen Chase, lead author of the 2006 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests.
But the damage went beyond lodgepoles. Ponderosa pines also suffered from mountain pine beetles in 2006, along with:
• 138,000 acres of aspens declining from a mysterious affliction.
• 68,000 acres of spruce infested with bark beetles.
• 372,000 acres of subalpine fir attacked by Western balsam bark beetles, root diseases and other unknown factors.
• 19,000 acres of piñon pines infested with ips beetles.
• 93,000 acres of Douglas fir, true fir and spruce hit by Western spruce budworm.
As for the causes:
"A lot of these outbreaks got kicked off because of the drought, but forest conditions have allowed them to keep expanding," said U.S. Forest Service entomologist Bob Cain. "We have pretty uniform conditions of older, denser forests across the state, which are susceptible to the bark beetles," he said. "So even though the drought conditions have improved, the outbreaks are continuing."
Which sounds to me like he might be referring to those "decadent" old growth stands. I'm not convinced that any new logging regime is going to change this situation. From what I've seen, when the trees, living or dead, are logged, they come back in the same, dense, single age stands to which Bob Cain refers. And then we have a never ending cycle until the seed stock is gone.
Moreover, no reference to global warming in the article, which with warming temperatures has reduced the winter freezes that kept the beetles in check. Nothing to be done about that for a long time.
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