Pine beetle spreads as ponderosas threatened

By Stephen Clearheart Johnson
North Forty News

This summer the mountain pine beetle finished its annual cycle, flying out to infest more trees. The beetles have consumed almost all the succulent mature lodgepole pines in the high country and are now faced with moving back down to their ancestral feeding grounds, the ponderosa.

In December 2007, Forest Service surveys revealed an alarming amount of damage in Larimer County. Hopes were high that the ponderosa would show more resistance and slow the rate of spread of the beetle and its traveling companion, the blue stain fungus that actually kills the trees.

That hope is not buoyed by the latest news.

"We have been finding a large number of ponderosa pines hit with MPB in the Virginia Dale area, very little MPB last year," said David Lentz, Larimer County forester.

Mike Hughes, assistant district forester for the Colorado State Forest Service, noted that he has seen "a significant increase" in infested ponderosas in the Bull Mountain area near the Wyoming border in the Laramie River Valley.

"The ponderosa are being heavily hit," Jeff Smith of Firewise Forest Management agreed. "Untreated ponderosa stands in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming are experiencing between a 5 percent to 30 percent infestation."

In September, Fort Collins residents were startled to witness ponderosas and nonnative Austrian pines hard hit by newly arrived beetles. Conventional thinking held that the beetles could fly only a mile. Heavy winds are thought to have helped them move farther.

Ingrid Aguayo, CSFS forest entomologist, has been doing aerial surveys to assess damage. Although final results will not be available until December, Aguayo noted, "An increasing number of fading ponderosa pines was found along the Front Range, wherever ponderosa pine occurred in close proximity to lodgepole pine forests infested by mountain pine beetle. Examples include the Lower Poudre Canyon, the South Fork of the Cache la Poudre River and several of its tributaries, the lower elevations of Rocky Mountain National Park, and the communities of Allenspark, Estes Park, Empire, Gilpin, Nederland and Rollinsville."

One danger from the beetle kill is the possibility for catastrophic forest fires. As long as the needles remain on the trees, the chance for major crown fires remains high. When the trunks begin to fall, the danger of damaging ground fires increases. Ground fires can cause severe damage to soil and have long-term effects on the watershed.

"We practice forestry to manage watersheds," said Mark Morgan, owner of Morgan Timber Products and a forester with 35 years of experience in fuels reduction, logging and wood utilization.

Morgan views the current beetle problem with a long-range point of view. "Where you have a history of good forest management," said Morgan, "you will have losses but they won't be excessive."

He noted that current conditions were brought about partly because of years of public pressure to leave public forests unmolested, virtually without management. Now, said Morgan, "we will have a new forest and we will have choices to make about how to manage the new forest."

In the meantime, hopes are also fading for the much publicized state and county effort to establish sort yards to aid property owners in disposal of trees or slash. With great fanfare, the Peak-To-Peak Wood program uniting several Front Range counties with seed money from a state grant sought to establish a vigorous program that has yet to come to fruition in Larimer County. Five or more sort yards were proposed for Larimer County, but only two have opened and only one has been active.

Near Allenspark, Larimer and Boulder counties are jointly operating a sort yard, complete with air curtain burner that has seen much use from the hard-hit area east of Rocky Mountain National Park.

A second yard in Stove Prairie opened this summer but closed for the season without having any participants. This site accepted logs only, not slash. Since logs are usually the only valuable part of thinning and fuels reduction, property owners have little motivation to use a limited site. It is thought that the $38,000 budgeted for the site will have some funds to carry over to next year due to the lack of activity this year.

The Stove Prairie area has not been hit hard yet, but proposed sites in the harder-hit areas of Upper Poudre Canyon, Red Feather Lakes and Laramie River were not established.

One thing is certain as the beetle moves on. As existing dead trees drop their needles, and eventually fall, new vistas will open up. The Rocky Mountains will soon start looking much more rocky.