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It's like sitting at the death bed of your closest friend out here. The death of our forests is one of the worst things I've witnessed in my life time. I have pictures I took of the spruce forests 10 years ago in the San Juan. Even in that relatively short period of time, the degradation of the forests is both spooky and heart-breaking. I've hung on in SW Colorado despite the dearth of jobs, despite the lack of most amenities, despites the ups and downs in my personal fortunes. But I believe that one day soon, the death of all those trees will finally drive me out. A person can only take so much sorrow.
It is sad for many of us, but Mother Nature doesn't care about us. She will replace the forests with other species--maybe not trees, but grasses and forbs. The thing to be clear about here is that natural forces may be part of the change in the forests, but our human stupidity (which is ongoing) in managing them is much of the reason that pine beetle is raising hell with the coniferous forests now. We suppressed natural fires for over a century, then built a ton of worthless man-made crap in many of the forests, such that natural fires have to be totally suppressed. In those areas, the "enlightened" environmentalist community kicked and scratched to stop any logging in overgrown forests that might have, albeit somewhat unnaturally, mitigated some of the spread of the pine beetle. So now, we have the worst of everything: Overmature, overgrown, unhealthy forests susceptible to pine beetles and other pests, a wildland fire management strategy that's all about protecting structures built in tinderboxes rather than managing fire as tool to cleanse unhealthy forests. The whole thing is a strategy designed for total failure. The sick forests are going to burn. The fires will be beyond what humans can control and whole lot of the junk we built where it never should of been will be destroyed--with firefighters killed in the futile process of trying to save it. And a forest management regime that will continue to cause more healthy forests to succumb to beetles and other pests. And I've said before, Mother Nature bats last and she's going to beat us silly when she's up to the plate on this deal.
I drive down to Ouray from Grand Junction about once a month for a simple day trip outing. Seems like I see more dead trees every time I go down there. Just a few years ago, the forests seemed pretty healthy. Same thing up on the Grand Mesa. More dead trees every time I go up there.
^Yep. 50 years ago, the biggest problem in the forests was generally the spruce budworm. A lot of areas where infestations were serious (Grand Mesa was one) saw extensive logging done to remove the dead trees. Several sawmills on the Western Slope ran for years at least partly on budworm-kill spruce. That kind of logging was pretty much stopped by the mid- to late-1970's and, since then, pest infestations in the forests have steadily worsened and fires have become much more frequent, much larger and much more likely to become ground-scouring megafires. I'm not saying the logging is the best way to manage forests--frequent, small natural burns are usually preferable--but without natural fires, logging often is the only option to removed diseased trees and/or thin overcrowded forests. A forester friend told me a while back that Colorado's forests are now so diseased that it would take more loggers than are working in the entire US to keep up with the progress of pest kill of trees in the state's forests. "It's all going to burn, sooner or later," was his cryptic comment.
If left to her own devices nature, and her forests, would be just fine. Surely true that she cares not for the concerns of men. But if extreme at times, she will always seek a certain balance.
The imbalances we are experiencing in Colorado's forests are of mankind's doing. The agents, such as insects or wildfires, can be nature's own. They are integral to these forests and have always existed. But as widespread and extreme today due that wrought by outside influences.
There are currently proposals to create a national park in the northern Black Forest of Germany, in the vicinity of the town of Baiersbronn. One facing a good degree of local opposition from interests such as sawmills that have used these forests as a resource for centuries. There is a widespread Protestant ethic and mindset which is quite uncomfortable with the notion of a place where nature reigns supreme and is simply left alone to do as she will. The area in question would encompass about 24,000 acres in one of the few areas in Germany relatively pristine. That pales in comparison to even a fairly small US national park, such as iconic Mesa Verde at about 52,000 acres. But in either case, or continent, they each are affected by the outside influences of our rapidly changing world and climate. There, as in Colorado and particularly southern Colorado, the forests are in danger due the unnatural spread of the spruce budworm and other forces enhanced.
While there are different notions in how best to use and manage our forests, to a large degree they all miss the key point. Nature will respond and make adjustments as necessary. We may not like the effect, particularly if fond of how we found her work when first born and aware. But then the answer is simple enough. If preferring all as it was—then we should have left it that way. To the degree we do not, as in a massive influx of greenhouse gasses into this atmosphere, we should not be surprised that she responds.
The natural harmony we may seek can be had, but first must be found within the soul of each of us.
Got a new one to worry about, the Emerald Ash Borer, may lay waste to billions of dollars of Ash trees in Colorado. Story here.
May deserve its own thread in the coming years. We have 5 nice mature (20+ yrs old) ashes on our property, and just planted another one in 2012. We've spent a small fortune on a variety new trees the past couple years to add some privacy & shade, but it'll be a while before they've grown enough to be effective.
Now we're leery of scams to 'treat' the ash trees for the bug, knowing that it most likely will all be in futility in the long run. We're about 5mi outside of N. Boulder, where they've found many more infected trees per the Nov 20 update: Department of Agriculture - Plants - Emerald Ash Borer
We've already lost 8 huge walnuts to the Thousand Cankers disease ... just today I got a quote for $3500 to take them out and haul them to Ft Lupton for milling and then will have an estimate on what we might see as far as a 'refund' for the finished wood ... but it won't be nearly enough to offset the expense of taking them out.
Really sucks ... I hate seeing trees die, and having to wait years for the new ones to fill out.
"In Rocky Mountain National Park, where roughly 90 percent of the park’s more than 200,000 acres were impacted by bark beetles, the forest will be allowed to regenerate without human intervention." [1]
An interesting article in The Coloradoan newspaper, with nothing particularly new, nevertheless a good basic overview of the pine mountain beetle situation for those somewhat unfamiliar.
Some of the points touched upon—in no particular order—would be that these beetles, natural to the environment, tend to feed on and kill lodgepole pine trees of at least 6 inches in diameter, as best suited to their purposes. Ideally, it is the older and sicker trees which are thus weeded out. However in this epidemic I have seen lodgepole's of all sizes and ages so affected, even those quite young and small. Those perhaps not from these beetles, but certainly a great number from some cause.
It might be noted that while the mountain pine beetle principally favors the lodgepole pine, that species such as the ponderosa pine are affected as well. There are different types of beetles specific to different types of trees, such as the spruce beetle, all currently running rampant. As well other maladies, such as disease, now widespread.
According to the head of Colorado State University's Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Skip Smith, this is the future of the forest, and will happen again. He points to a similar, if smaller, outbreak of the mountain pine beetle in the 1970s.
This sentiment is echoed by others, which point to Colorado's forests as being a veritable buffet for such beetles, due past logging which left large forests of a general uniformity and age.
There is a certain contingent, not limited to the US Forest Service, which considers much of this nothing but a sign of mismanagement. Or that they should have been allowed and more proactive in such practices as "thinning" the forest—or in other words turning a forest ecosystem into some semblance of a suburban park. They will point to "successes" in such places as the Black Hills of South Dakota where that running most rampant are loggers, with the ponderosa pine beetle subdued 'thanks to the timber industry.'
To them the 'worth' of a forest is principally in its monetary value. Thus lamenting that affected trees quickly lose their "value." Within much beyond the first year after death the wood of these trees is no longer considered to have much market use or value, having degenerated (as in decay). Then the problem in places like Colorado where it is not 'worth' it to transport out or use such trees—or in effect not a paying proposition.
Then those, such as Diana Six, an entomologist with the University of Montana, who take a different view. Saying in part that these beetle outbreaks are neither predictable nor cyclic, but sporadic. Furthermore that forestry management is not the issue, but one true cause: "It is climate, period," she says.
Insofar as forestry management and not logging or otherwise pruning these forests to within an inch of their lives, she says this is one of the biggest myths prevalent. One, I might add, fostered by many a monied, and unprincipled, interest.
“You can have dense, old-growth stuff for centuries and never get an outbreak,” she [Six] said. “Warmth allows the beetles to develop into larger numbers, and they have to mass attack trees. But if it’s warm, they have better productivity and have a higher survival rate. But also during a warm, droughty period, the trees get stressed and they don’t have as much of a defense.”
She adds that another myth is the severe cold of winter will kill these beetles, if not, according to her, doing so. It is the slight cold snaps in autumn or spring, when the beetles have not developed their natural anti-freeze immunity, that will kill them.
Or, to reiterate, that these beetles do not come in natural cycles. Rather waiting for a perfect storm of conditions—in drought, warmth, and tree health—to manifest in large numbers.
Where these conditions are viewed in some quarters as a perfect opportunity to "manage" what is left of our natural forests all the more, elsewhere nature will be allowed to proceed where she might. Rocky Mountain National Park is one such place, where the park has unfortunately witnessed some 90 percent of its lodgepole pine trees, these especially on the west side of the divide, so affected. But despite some quite ill-conceived projects in removing more than a few affected trees near roads and campgrounds—and in more than a few instances perfectly healthy trees—nevertheless the intention, presumably, to largely leave the forests of RMNP to their own devices.
“I don’t think anything needs to be done with these trees,” said Verhulst, the park forester. “It is a natural process. We are letting Mother Nature run the natural course without human influence.”
He points out that it has been 150 years in RMNP since the last severe outbreak of beetles, with the park overdue for a reordering that the forest will ultimately thrive on.
Although in the short term the result of these beetles and near entire mountainsides left with dead trees will impress if distress the visitor. Then also if RMNP will ever find the courage, and permission from certain powers that be, to truly leave these forests be. For as Verhulst also adds, “ ‘Ok, lets let the beetle do their thing,’ that only works if you include all the ecology, which would include fire.”
Anyone having paid recent attention will know that the massive Yellowstone NP wildfires of 1988 might have been the last time the National Park Service attempted to give wildfires free reign. In the end they did fight and limit this wildfire as well, and not just around such valued properties as the Old Faithful Inn. In both 2012 and 2013, RMNP chose to fight and limit lightening-caused wildfires within RMNP.
Yet, it will be within such places as RMNP that the best chance afforded to witness in time how nature can recover and regenerate her forests on her own. She could use some assistance from us—in leaving her be.
Foresters that I know say that prolonged very cold winter weather will kill overwintering beetle larvae in trees, but the frigid temperatures have to be sustained and severe. As to logging being a driving force in the beetle epidemic, that is not really true, either. Most Colorado forests are not even-aged. In the northern half of Colorado, lodgepole can replace firs and spruce if the spruce-fir are logged or burned, but that area, with just a few exceptions, was not one of heavy logging. Most Colorado lodgepole forests are actually climax forests that require fire to regenerate. Lodgepole has never been a major wood source in the Rockies because the "dog-hair" lodgepole forests here simply do not grow trees big enough to be economical to log.
The heaviest logging in Colorado historically occurred in the spruce-fire and Ponderosa forests, primarily in the southern half of the state. In most of those areas, Ponderosa was often clear cut, and much of it has never grown back. The grasslands, for example, that one sees between Pagosa Springs, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico were once part of the "Chama Pinery," a huge forest of mature Ponderosa. That area was mercilessly logged in the early 1900's (much of early Denver was built with lumber from that pinery) and the open meadows that cover much of the area were the result. Ironically, latter-day selective cutting in the Ponderosa forests has actually made some of those forests less healthy. Reason? With the mature larger trees cut, small trees proliferated. With a century of fire suppression, those trees were never naturally thinned by fire, so today the forest is overcrowded and susceptible to beetles. In the spruce-fir forests, the successional tree in areas heavily logged was the quaking aspen. Most of Colorado's beautiful aspen forests are there because of the logging of spruce and fir that occurred over a century ago during the state's silver mining boom. Eventually, spruce and fir would re-colonize those aspen forests. The big question is whether that will actually happen. The question is whether or not climate change has so disrupted the forest ecology, that neither aspen nor spruce-fir can survive over the long term in areas that have been their historical habitat.
One thing for certain, years of drought and above normal temperatures are aggravating the beetle problem, even to the point of allowing multiple hatches of beetles in a single season. And, as I posted elsewhere, the current long-term forecast for Colorado is for yet another drier than normal winter in most of the mountain areas. A couple more of those and it won't only be the trees having a real challenge for survival in Colorado.
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Of a natural harmony
