Researcher: Forests will bounce back from beetles

From the Associated Press:

ASPEN, Colo.—Western forests are already showing signs of a comeback amid a bark beetle epidemic that has killed millions of lodgepole pines in Colorado and Wyoming, a researcher says.

Greg Aplet, senior forest scientist at The Wilderness Society, told a weekend conference in Aspen that forests that have been attacked by bark beetles will eventually bounce back with more diversity in the ages and species of trees.

But Aplet said it may not happen in the lifetime of anyone alive today, The Aspen Times reported.

An aerial survey by the U.S. Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service showed the epidemic has spread across 4 million acres of trees in Colorado and Wyoming, devastating entire forests in Colorado's Summit, Grand and Eagle counties.

The lack of variety in today's forests is a remnant of the mining era, when mountainsides were stripped bare of their vegetation and used for fuel, Aplet said.

Lodgepole pines then proved to be especially resilient and competitive when they spread through the West in the wake of the fires and droughts that wiped out what was left of the greenery.

Studies have shown that 80 percent of lodgepole trees in Colorado were all around the same age before succumbing to the beetles.

But the drought that struck in the previous decade weakened trees of all types and laid the foundation for an intense and severe beetle epidemic, Aplet said.

He said climate change has also contributed to the problem, with warmer temperatures allowing beetles to infest more varieties of trees in higher elevations.

Lodgepoles have withstood epidemics before and won't disappear from the Rockies, Aplet said. He said he is optimistic that spruces and firs will eventually replace the dead lodgepole population.

Pine Beetle Wars

The Black Hills of South Dakota, the Black Elk Wilderness in particular, is just one of any number of areas in the western US that has a significant pine beetle infestation. The issue of how to manage damage from beetle kill is no small task, especially when federally designated wilderness is brought into the discussion. Land managers across the western US are wrestling with the pine beetle and what do about it, in addition to other threats to wilderness.

The mountain pine beetle (MPB), Dendroctonus ponderosae, is a species of bark beetle native to the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. It has a hard black exoskeleton and measures about 5 millimeters, about the size of a grain of rice. Mountain pine beetles inhabit ponderosa, lodgepole, Scotch and limber pine trees. During early stages of an outbreak, attacks are limited largely to trees under stress from injury, poor site conditions, fire damage, overcrowding, root disease, or old age. As beetle populations increase, the beetles attack the largest trees in the outbreak area.

A recent article in the South Dakota Rapid City Journal explores the issues surrounding the pine beetle both inside and outside of wilderness.

From the Rapid City Journal:

The fight is over in the Black Elk Wilderness. The beetles won.

And they’re winning all through the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, a 35,000-acre tract of relative isolation that includes the 13,000-acre Black Elk and the state’s highest point at Harney Peak.

That ravaged piece of high-country landscape is the epicenter of a plague of mountain pine beetles that is eating its way across the Black Hills. It is a biological version of a wildfire that could for generations change the face of this island of forest rising up from the surrounding plains.

The patches of rusty-brown pine trees that mark the destructive path of the beetles are appearing everywhere. Once limited to a few patches of dead or dying trees in the high country, they are now apparent from the highway near Crazy Horse, along the road to Rochford and on the ridges of Spearfish Mountain.

“Just about anywhere you go in the forest these days you can throw a rock and hit a beetle tree sooner or later,” said Kurt Allen, an entomologist for the U.S. Forest Service in Rapid City. “In my travels around the Hills, I’ve seen it just about everywhere.”

Read the full article here: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_aeb883cc-0034-11e0-a6a5-001cc4c03286.html