Aspen Trees Die Across the West

OnlineWSJ.com ^ | Oct. 15, 2010 | Stephanie Simon

[GSWarrior]

DENVER -- This should be the golden season across the West, when aspen paint hillsides in shades of fall.

But a mysterious ailment -- or perhaps a combination of factors -- is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of the trees from Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona through Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and into Canada, according to the U.S. government and independent scientists.

The aspen die-off comes on the heels of a pine-beetle invasion that has destroyed millions of acres of evergreens. Foresters expect to lose virtually every mature lodgepole pine in Colorado -- five million acres of them.

[Alberta's Child]

The pine beetle infestation in western Canada brought out a stark illustration of just how different people can be from one province to another.

In British Columbia, the response was: "The pine beetles are killing off our trees and decimating our logging industry. Someone (i.e., the taxpayers) must provide financial assistance to help us."

In Alberta, the response was: "If the pine beetles are going to kill off our trees, let's cut them down and sell the lumber while we still can!"

[kaylar]

I should have typed We went to SD for vacation in August 2009 and-

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“The title says it was published next fall..”

by Tachyon Press!

[James C. Bennett]

Trees have rotted before, too.

[ScoopAmma]

The allepo pines in the Phoenix area are being severely hit. I just had two 40’ trees removed from my yard with another due to be taken out shortly. Funny thing about this is that the City of Phoenix has gone on a mission to cite homeowners for violations. It is against city ordinance to have a dead tree in your own back yard. This is their new effort to collect revenues. I chose to pay the landscaper $2000.00 to remove them rather than give one single penny to Phil Gordon.

[rellimpank]

--so far, the bugs haven't made it across Fremont Pass (at Climax) toward Leadville to any extent.

South Dakota has several thousand acres affected near Custer State Park and there are more sick and dying trees showing up in the Deadwood-Lead area---

[kaylar]

Oh, no! :-( Custer State Park, Mt Rushmore state park, and Wind Cave (?) National Park were all so beautiful! I hope SD is able to stop (and hopefully reverse) the damage. :-(

[maine-iac7]

the sad thing is that, unlike other tress that are an entity unto themselves, an aspen grove is basically one humongous plant - each ‘tree’ sprouting up from ‘runners’ that reach out like spider webs just under the surface.

So whatever attacks “one” tree is, in reality, attacking every aspen in sight - and up the hill and down the valley and over the mountain and....

But nature has her reasons and her seasons. Man just needs to get the heck out of the way

[rellimpank]

—basically, it’s unstoppable—there are too many acres and each tree has to be sprayed individually at the appropriate time in the life cycle of the bugs, IIRC—

[TigersEye]

Foresters expect to lose virtually every mature lodgepole pine in Colorado -- five million acres of them.

Are they issuing any permits for people to harvest them? No, not as far as I know.

[rellimpank]

---IIRC, during the Reagan years , there was an attempt to establish a facility to process aspen to pulpwood in Colorado, because it was known that many aspen forests were approaching the end of their life. This , of course was stopped by the tree-huggers.

Now the trees are just dying, unused---

[The Duke]

I think aspen trees only flourish in the presence of capitalism.

At least we'll always have the pictures!

[bmwcyle]

[fieldmarshaldj]

The bugs haven’t reached Climax ?

[RC2]

Make a good size picnic bench out of them. If they can, make them out of 4x6’s. Other than that, sorry to hear you lost the trees. DDT would have stopped the lose....from what I understand.

[rellimpank]

—(snicker)—way too many of them have -—

[RC2]

“lose” should have been “Loss”. Sorry about that. Thought I would correct it before someone else did...LOL

[STYRO]

Trees have a life span. When they reach the end of their life span they die. Colorado's forests have suffered from too much protection and not enough harvesting. The trees grew too big and too close together for the soil and available water to support. Overcrowding makes them susceptible to disease and bugs.

[RoadTest]

This was my thought, too. A judgement plague.

[george76]

Thanks.

We love them, but Aspen trees are just big weeds.

Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground.

One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of “Pando”, is claimed to be 80,000 years old, making it possibly the oldest living colony of aspens.

http://www.answers.com/topic/aspen

Second, pine beetles are not the worry on aspen trees. IMO