Beetle Infested or Thirsty Trees in Roundup? (Billings, Musselshell: house, neighborhood)

[br0ns0n77]

Hey everyone,

I posted a thread a few months back about a property I'm thinking about buying in MT. I tried calling the field office to see if someone could come out and look at the trees there because they seemed very brown in places, dry and a lot were fallen over - seems the number was disconnected when I tried calling so I'm not sure who to contact about it. With that being said, whether the pines looked dry due to the dryness of the area or whether it's beetles I'm not certain.

Anyway, I'm posting a low resolution photo of the some of the trees. You may not be able to tell much from it - if not, I'll try to get a higher resolution shot from the video. Some of the smaller trees even had brown needles on them. More than anything the bark on the trees looked especially dark and the limbs were very brittle. Now I'm comparing these to trees in NC that get tons of water, so that may be the issue.

Thanks for the help!

[suzy_q2010]

http://www.msuextension.org/counties...%20Beetles.pdf

[historyfan]

At that distance it hard to tell from your photo if it is beetled.

PondeBullBoxer31 are a survivor tree. Those appear to be PondeBullBoxer31. They will drop needles to survive a drought. And when they mature the bottom branches will dry and become handy kindling. Porcupines chew bark and can cause tree death or parts to brown up. It is obvious when you look at the bark if porcupines have been at work.

I don't think the Roundup area is in a drought. It is a naturally very dry area though.

Musselshell County Extension office should have some info and some examples of beetlekill. Since you are not a property owner I don't believe they would send somebody out to take a look, but you never know. You would likely need hire a forestry tech or log cruiser type to come survey the trees. Extension should be able to recommend someone.

[br0ns0n77]

Thank you for the replies, that made me feel much better about it. The realtor said they weren't beetled, but just wanted to double check with locals. I appreciate the help.

[marknboo]

Originally Posted by br0ns0n77

Hey everyone,

I posted a thread a few months back about a property I'm thinking about buying in MT. I tried calling the field office to see if someone could come out and look at the trees there because they seemed very brown in places, dry and a lot were fallen over - seems the number was disconnected when I tried calling so I'm not sure who to contact about it. With that being said, whether the pines looked dry due to the dryness of the area or whether it's beetles I'm not certain.

Anyway, I'm posting a low resolution photo of the some of the trees. You may not be able to tell much from it - if not, I'll try to get a higher resolution shot from the video. Some of the smaller trees even had brown needles on them. More than anything the bark on the trees looked especially dark and the limbs were very brittle. Now I'm comparing these to trees in NC that get tons of water, so that may be the issue.

Thanks for the help!

From what I see the Trees look like Beetle Kill. It's not a big deal unless you want all your trees to be Green. We have not had enough cold weather in MT to kill the beetles, need 2 - 3 weeks of -10 -30 * weather to kill them. I love Beetle Ponderosa because I have a Saw Mill and I make furniture and log cabins out of Blue Pine.

Mark

[historyfan]

Realtors are either seller's agents or buyer's agents. Beware of anything a seller's agent says. Many are not trustworthy. Do your own due diligence and proceed with caution. I have heard the most spectacular lies come out of the mouths of seller's agents. Requesting clarification of said declarations in writing typically cools their line of utter BS.

As the furniture maker said from your photo those appear to be beetle infested. If there is an infestation in the neighborhood it will spread. Pesticide spraying is effective only if done in the entire area. The National Forest does not, as policy, spray at this time.

[rambrush]

If you are on site you can tell right away due to the boring sap pockets from Bark Beetles.

[br0ns0n77]

Thanks for the info guys, I didn't really notice any bores or sap coming from the tree bark at all. I feel like I would have noticed that. The realtor is a local guy and so far everything he has told me has been legit, so I have a decent level of trust with him. He's been selling land north of Billings for 20+ years. I tried to stay away from the big whigs (Remax etc).

The majority of the greens were definitely green, just looked like they were starting to dry up, but maybe that's because of the dryness of the area. The biggest thing that concerns me are the fires out there but if I make sure to do my part on making sure there are cleared boundaries around the house and around the edge of the property I would hope to be fine. Also, this might sound like a dumb question, but the property is right off hwy 87 and from what I could tell most of the recent fires have been west of the highway. Being the highways act as a barrier, do you see forest fires jump the road much? I'm sure in high winds that would occur.

[historyfan]

Highways with cleared right of ways do help provide a place to fight back a fire if a crew is on hand. A roaring forest fire will jump a highway. Once pine trees start exploding wildfire spreads very fast. I found floating hunks of burnt bark in stock tank more than 1/2 from burning ridge across highway. Grass fires are more easily contained. It is important to have firebreaks on your place.

[rambrush]

I could cover a lot of pages in regards to fire protection but will defer to this website for you to poke through all of the materials.
Also keep in mind that the Montana DNR will not be putting there crews in harms way to protect your place any longer. It is the property owners responsibility to fire proof there sites.

http://www.firewise.org/wildfire-preparedness.aspx