Posted on 08/27/2007 8:19:00 AM PDT by george76
An unstoppable wave could devastate 3 million acres of lodgepole pines.
Mountain pine beetles are obliterating a forest that stretches from British Columbia to Mexico, and in the process are creating a hazard for fire, public safety and water supply.
“What we’re looking at is an entire lodgepole pine forest dying right before our eyes,”...
Severson described the problem to the Colorado Water Congress at its convention last week....
More than 22 million acres eventually will be destroyed in the American West. Meanwhile, the beetles are making their way across Canada toward the Atlantic Ocean as well.
The lack of logging has created a higher proportion of large, older trees in the forests. They’re all about the same age and equally vulnerable.
The damage is spreading faster than in the past, with 660,000 acres of trees destroyed in 2006 alone, and this year’s total still being counted.
The U.S. Forest Service has brought other agencies into a cooperative effort, but can’t move fast enough to contain the problem, Carroll said. Private landowners are doing most of the work of thinning trees so far.
About 15 years prior to the disastrous 1988 Yellowstone fire, there was a massive beetle infestation...
“We need to manage forests for a healthy forest to reduce threat of fire,” ... Sen. Jack Taylor...cited a blow-down of 20,000 acres of trees in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness area of the Routt National Forest associated with the October 1997 blizzard that buried Southeastern Colorado in snow.
“It was so jack-strawed, even the game couldn't get through,” ... There was a weakening of trees and the trees started turning red. ... We need to get what wood we can, get some value out of it, not leave kindling for a big fire."
(Excerpt) Read more at chieftain.com ...
.
Al Gore is deeply saddened...
We have a weird new pine borer beetle killing a lot of trees, here.
Supposedly, they were “accidentally” imported in Chinese cargo.
We have had a nasty “bark” beetle infestation for years here in California. It has devestated tree in the Angles National Forest and resulted in numerous fires.
Bring back DDT before we loose everything. I believe that it has been proven that DDT doesn’t hurt a thing.
Also, please note that what the government is doing is counting, not fixing. They will count the beetles, and they will count the trees, maybe count the houses and the people. They will count the streams and then count the fishes in them. And when they finish they will realize a lot of time is elapsed so they will go back and resume counting all over again. They cought to count the obstructionist environmentalists and throw them all in the slammer.
What eats bark-beetles?
I knew this would happen because the USDA failed to quarantine these 4 specimens in back in '64.
And then the loss of the trees and brush causes mudslides when it rains.
But.....let’s not harm the environment by:
A. killing the beetles
B. clearing the trees once dead
Good question for a forester : “ What eats bark-beetles? “
Thanks for the picture.
Next : a big fire .
“Good question for a forester : “ What eats bark-beetles? “”
Geez, I can be a slow learner, but how many frickin times do we have to go through this 100% predictable experience, always so devastating to forests? The Greenies say we can’t log ‘em, we can’t clear ‘em, so we have to undergo total destruction, either by horrific firestorm or bark beetle. Same crap everywhere.
Here's a stitch of two photos in the Revelstoke area showing some infected trees as well as areas that have been harvested...
Here's a zoom in on some of the infected area..
Sir Paul McCartney is a vegetarian you know...
A Stihl chainsaw.
Environmentalism Kills!
Thanks for the pictures.
Hopefully the Canadian politicans are smarter than ours.
Harvesting is a good solution.
The Greenies lawyers make tons of money by filing lawsuits; they do not apparently care about the envirnoment.
“The U.S. Forest Service has brought other agencies into a cooperative effort, but can’t move fast enough to contain the problem, Carroll said. Private landowners are doing most of the work of thinning trees so far.”
This quote underlines the problem. The Forest Service brings in other agencies. The private landowner brings in a CHAINSAW.
In Canada they are cutting this timber as fast as they can. They do not let stupid preservationist keep injuctions from harvesting timber.
PING
Many of the foresters in the forest service want to use science to solve this problem, but are prevented by all of the Sierra Club lawsuits.
Private land owners can solve the problem if they are awake. With ninety percent ? of the dead trees on public lands, the massive fires will blow into private lands...killing everything.
"It was so jack-strawed, even the game couldn't get through,""...kinda like Blair's foreign policy." [rimshot!]
The Sierra Club does not care if the trees die , or if the wildfire burns millions of acres because this is an act of nature.
If a couple hundred or thousand houses burn down also, so be it. It is a natural occurance.
However, if there are then mudslides that affect the spawning of the cutthroat trout then it is a problem.
Then its BUSH’s fault.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yeah, I know pretty much the whole phenomenon. It’s just a sickening waste of everything as far as I’m concerned.
These massive fire have, are, and will also pollute the air and the water supplies.
The heat is so high and for such a long duration that it kills everything in the soil.
Ash will kill fish, turtle, frogs...that depend on oxygen in the water.
and ...
Will DDT kill these beetles?
“In one of those unintended consequences, they got the bark beetle to take care of the deadwood in the forests for them.”
It actually kills the live tree because it kills the cambium layer(the live part between the wood and the bark) that conducts water and nutrients betweeen the leaves and the roots of the tree. It is not an insect that bores into the tree after the bark is burned off by a forest fire.
So what you end up with are forests of dead standing timber which is much more suseptable to lightning strikes and therefore hugh forest fires.
Yep.
Bring back DDT....:))
Came in from China, right?
Forests evolve. They recover from the burn, brush grows, new trees grow up, get thick, beetles come in and make them susceptible to a burn, the burn occurs, beetles get burned, brush grows, etc...
One "solution" being considered in Canada has been the possible introduction of the beetle's main predator in Asia -- a wasp of some kind that feeds on the beetle's eggs.
I’m sorry to hear that.
Having spent my entire life on mountain full of trees, I’m quite fond them.
I imagine woodpeckers, if they can get to them.
I blame Yoko.
“ What eats bark-beetles? “...Bark sharks?
Are you from Revelstoke? I spent three years in Mica. (Ya better like snow.)
Foresters have a scientific solution, but are prevented from acting by Sierra Club lawyers.
Many communities like South Lake Tahoe are prevented by liberal politicans from cleaning up around their own homes.
Thus a small fire explodes when the flames enter the neighborhood.
The people who violated the law and cleared away fuel away from their homes...still have a home.
Many of the people who followed the politican’s demands...lost their homes.
LOL.
Alberta is smarter than us.
Private people generally are good managers of their private lands but the feds are in big trouble.
I was listening to Dr. Walter Williams on Rush's show on Friday, and he said volunteers had eaten 34 ounces of DDT over a period of 1 1/2 years, and there were no side effects.
“Hopefully the Canadian politicans are smarter than ours.”
Ha! Good luck with that.
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