Below is a picture taken near Lake Arrowhead in 2002...
Posted on 10/20/2006 7:12:46 AM PDT by rellimpank
Mountain pine beetles are eating their way through a swath of forest in the central and northern Black Hills in an epidemic-sized infestation that began in 1997 and continues to accelerate.
“Big changes are coming,” Blaine Cook, silvaculturist for Black Hills National Forest, said.
Patches of reddish-brown ponderosa pines are clearly visible now from Norbeck Wildlife Preserve southwest of Mount Rushmore to the high limestone plateaus around Deerfield Reservoir and O’Neill Pass in the Northern Hills.
Cook said that ponderosas that turned red this year were “hit” a year ago and that the “bug trees” hit this year are still green. “They’re dead; they just don’t know it yet,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at rapidcityjournal.com ...
Looks like we need to clear cut and allow more forest fires.
If we allow Nancy Pelosi to be the speaker, she and her friend Barbara Boxer will have no problem expanding the "designated wilderness" areas which do not allow any forest management at all.
One could use helicopters and spray for pine beetles if they wanted to, but the environmental whackos would never allow it.
bring back........... DDT
They don't have to be. Every mothers son and daughter of a radical environmentalist sits four square on the side of the mountain pine beetle. By the time any case they bring grinds it's way through the court system, the damage has been done, and the schadenfreude is just beyond belief.
We have a lot of people volunteering here in NC, to go out and spray (or even wipe down with soapy water) for aelgids, trying to save the Carolina Hemlocks. Nobody's concerned about political affiliation. They're beautiful trees, and a relative rarity, a throwback to the last ice age. They only survived above a certain altitude, on northern exposures. Most of the balsams on the high balds are already gone, so we don't want a repeat.
Something similar is happening in the Big Bear area of California. I spoke to some of the locals who told me that brush fires kill the beetles off as well, but since natural brush fires are quickly put out, the beetle population has increased.
They also say that in the past, brush fires happened often enough that they quickly burned through the leaf litter and dead branches on the ground, quick enough that all the brush on the ground was consumed while allowing trees to survive.
Now there is so much brush on the forest floor that the fires burn hotter and last longer.
Below is a picture taken near Lake Arrowhead in 2002...
Adelgid
It's chainsaw time.
OK, flame away.
On a smaller property without a LOT of infestation, you can spray an infected tree early with SEVIN, a colorless, tasteless, and odorless toxin. The lower 10' is all it takes. The tree actually becomes a "TRAP" because when a female lays eggs, the males will come in to fertilize the eggs, (they die on contact) and other females will come in to lay eggs (they swarm a tree) and die on contact.
The SEVIN breaks down within a month to inert compounds.
I have done this many times and saved a LOT of trees.
The key is to walk your property often, look for yellow doughnut shaped clusters on the trees, look for yellow/brown crumbs at the base of the trees, and spray them early.
It is a cheap way to kill beetles. I have had trees get infected, sprayed them, had them survive (because the tree can overwhelm the beetles if they don't penetrate it with too many holes) and stop the beetles from spreading.
If a tree gets infected and is dying, you have to cut it down, cut it up, stack it, spray it, and cover it with a black/dark tarp in a sunny spot to dry it out while the larvae are still young.
The emerald ash borer (EAB) is a devastating exotic
insect pest of North American ash trees. First found
in Detroit in the summer of 2002, this insect has killed millions of ash trees in Michigan and has since been discovered
in parts of Ohio and Indiana. If the spread of EAB
is not controlled, it could eliminate ash trees as a species
from North America.
I can't say about pine beetles in the west, but the wooley adelgid was introduced, with no natural predation, so attempts to eradicate aren't going to upset anything.
OK..how about this...you raise about 2 million baby woodpeckers and let them go in the forest?
Man, that's one UGLY bug!
I hacve an acre here in east Tennessee. Got hit by the beetles several years ago and lost about 20 large pines. Only 2 or 3 survived. You have my condolences.
You'd think so. By the time a logger gets the permits and jumps through all the hoops and enviro-mental impact studies, the trees are worthless and the bugs have moved on.
We need to be able to get in there fast to eradicate the problem, or we won't have any forest left. Mind you, enviro wienies would rather see it go to waste than have "evil" timber companies making fire-lines and logging roads.
Logging and forest management is the only way to keep our forests healthy and this renewable resource recycling at maximum efficiency.
Or 2 million guineas! They'll get the fleas and ticks too.
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