Yesterday the Wilderness Society did a spin around the big tent looking for bloggers to take on an aeriel tour of the wilderness areas near Denver. I agreed and this morning, in a single prop plane, I saw what you’re seeing to the left, the Colorado pine beetle infestation in action. Red trees show where the beetles have taken hold, green trees are healthy. And large swathes of land are red, red, red.
But what my guide emphasized was that it’s not actually a crisis. Apparently lodgepole pine lives about 100 to 150 years normally, and it usually dies towards the end either to a beetle infestation or to a fire. Older lodgepoles can’t defend themselves from the beetles, but the younger ones can. And most of Colorado’s lodgepoles are over a hundred year old because back in the 1800’s miners did huge burns so they could see mountainside mineral veins. Add in the drought earlier in the decade, which also weakened resistance and it’s like red death sweeping across the land. But it’s a red death that the forest needs in order to be renewed, and is perfectly natural. Perhaps it’s here a few years earlier than without the drought, but it would have come soon enough in any case.
Of course, one response to the disease is by the logging industry which would love to get in there and chop the trees down before they get infested. After all, they’ll be dead soon. But, needless to say, they dead trees matter to the regeneration of the forest. Chop the dead trees down and the next set of trees will come up slower and harder.
Which means that, even though it looks and feels like a crisis, the correct response is actually to do pretty much nothing. For the future, however, the lesson is that forest practices of the past, which emphasized stopping forest fires rather than allowing burns to occur, are what has made this a problem. The pines are all dying at the same time because they’re all the same age. It’s very visible to the eye, when flying, that there are green patches of younger trees, which the red tide sweeps around, like a wave parting for islands.
So, while settlements certainly need to be protected from fire, most fires need to be allowed to run naturally. That will create a patchwork of trees of different ages, and while there will be infestations in the future, Colorado won’t lose almost all its pines all in the same time period.
The larger points are that natural systems often operate on cycles longer than the human lifespan and that we often don’t understand them. You can’t manage ecosystems with an eye only on the short term and you’re best not to interfere with natural systems unless you’re absolutely sure you understand what’s going on–and maybe even not then, because you may not understand as well as you think. Colorado’s pine beetle infestation sucks, but in the end it will right itself. Other cycles, such as those which regulate the environment, may not do so. There’s a lot of flex, but if we break them, we may not understand them well enough to fix them, and unlike in Colorado, waiting for nature to fix itself could take millenia.
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Morning, Ian.
All these recommendations would of course require a Department of the Interior run by an ecologically-aware individual, rather than an industry stooge.
Good Morning Ian,
was wondering about your “dead trees” tweet yesterday. wonderful post.
Logging proving some old chestnut about “the forest” and “the trees” :D
Gives new meaning to the term “red state.”
Thanks for taking the tour and sharing this information.
Good news for
peckerwoodswoodpeckers.The bark beetle have decimated forests from Oregon, CA and Northern Arizona. Approximately 1/3 of Arizona pine forests have been killed off.
Climate change is the big factor. Arizona is in its 13 year of a drought cycle and drought makes the pines more vulnerable to damage from the beetle. When there sufficient water, the sap repels the beetle but in drought situations, there is not enough sap in the tree for it to function let alone to repel the invasion. [my father retired US Forest Service Wildlife Biologists & Forestry Management]
What happens, more drought, more infected trees, more tinder [fuel] for fires, fires also impact climate and then when rains come to areas that have burned there is no trees or brush to hold back erosion which just makes the whole situation worse.
This is part of a larger problem that goes up into Canada. It’s due to warmer spells for longer periods of time. The spread of infestation is opportunistic.
The other factor is lack of biodiversity which is the problem with ash in vicinity of Michigan. Overcutting introduces a monoculture of ash that became highly susceptible to the emerald ash borer and in turn promoted an explosion of borer populations.
Interesting post, Ian. I had seen the pine bark beetle effects when visiting my son in Colorado earlier this summer. I was familiar with the beetle because pines in Louisiana were attacked when I lived there for a while in the 80’s. Their treatment, was to cut the timber and burn it, in an effort to exterminate the beetle. Of course many of the pine forests were commerial forests, owned by paper companies. Your info about the current thinking, and treatment as similar to current thinking regarding forrest fires, is enlightening.
The beetles consume the layer just beneath the bark. I had a pine tree just outside my front door. I stepped out at dusk and kept hearing a sound which was almost exactly like that of static electricity eminiating from the tree. It was the beetles chomping away just beneath the bark.
waa, there aren’t many old chestnuts — least not American ones
*sniff*
I have one in my backyard, but I’m not so sure it doesn’t have some Chinese Chestnut in it — I’m guessing it’s 90 years old.
And goodbye American elm, you can still see some of those skeletons on the hillsides. Lost a gorgeous one in the front yard years ago, I cried and cried.
The dead trees also burn HOT. The heat is enough to turn the dirt to glass. Which makes the run off problem even worse.
OTOH, fire is restorative, and it is clean compared to the putrefaction caused by flood/water.
That is true with our current forestry process. The current process is for lumbering companies to go in and clear cut a swath of land, everything including underbrush is leveled, these areas look ravaged, then by federal law the lumbering company is required to replant that land within a specified number of years BUT do they plan the standard diverse species of trees that the original forest had?
No, they plant a tree that they can use in 20 years to harvest again, regardless at times of the area and whether it can support it. So in places like Oregon whose natural forests have a mix of pine, fir, alder and maple, no it is Douglas Fir exclusively. If another type of tree grows then it is a fluke
We have had the same problem here in Central Oregon. This is a product of many years of fire suppression. Natural fires clear out the under brush and smaller trees allowing the larger trees to flourish. I’ve lived here for more than twenty years and some of the areas with heavy “Beetle Kill” are starting to return. A comprehensive Forest Plan may mitigate this problem, but we will never be able to completely recover from the fire suppression foible.
which is why ALL old growth forests must be protected from now on to forever.
there even are trees that need fire for their seeds to germinate, the seeds will lay dormant for years and years until superheated. But I don’t think the lodgepole is one of those.
OT–it’s great to see that the convention is adding to the arts scene in Denver. This is hilarious.
That is certainly the case as you describe it, particularly in the Pacific Northwest region of the country. Natural forests get swept away and replaced by homogeneous stands.
In the case of the North Central area, the ash was not planted, it just grew in the place of the original forest. Ash is a beautiful tree, but generally occurs naturally in a mixed-forest not unlike what you described, and more widely dispersed rather than in plantations. This made the species vulnerable. It’s quite more susceptible to borer attack than species native to China, but still, it could survive in a natural environment, as has been noted in the literature.
I bought the Goodnight, Bush book. It is hilarious.
ian,
fantastic essay! thanks so much for the insight into an issue that i believe displays a great example of the value of true conservatism: sometimes it’s best to just stand back and let events unfold themselves. there’s frequently a bigger picture issue, and things will actually improve if we just relax and let go.
this sentiment would not apply to the current administration, for reasons that are obvious…
Just the opposite! Lodgepole needs fire to re-germinate. It can be re-planted and after logging a very mature Lodgepole forest, our forester went in and replanted with Lodgepole as it was the best for the site. Lodgepole has to be logged differently than Douglas Fir and Ponderosa Pines. Lodgepole should be logged leaving clusters. If you do them like Ponderosa Pines with 20 foot spacing, then the first wind event will topple a lot of them.
It a fire gets too hot, you won’t get the re-germination. There is a hill just south of where I live that burned hot twenty years ago. There are still no trees on it, just bushes.
Great post, Ian, thanks. The intersection between global climate change, forest management, and environmental policy is indeed complex, to say the least.
Interesting aside: Was on a snowshoe hike with a ranger in Yosemite a couple years ago. He said that as Yosemites ’s climate warms, the giant redwoods’ and firs’ habitat is moving northward. Under “normal” circumstances, the forests could adapt. However, as climate change accelerates, the trees can’t “migrate” fast enough. So they can’t reproduce under the warmer, changed climate and ultimately die off.
oh thanks for that!
Well – at least there were a few worthwhile comments in this thread, but by and large y’all don’t know bear poop about forests or trees – or ecology.
Let the forest burn and release mega-CO2 into the air. Log it and the CO2 stays in the lumber.
As a couple of commenters said, burn it with the super-heat of dead/dry wood, and you virtually sterilize the soil.
Let the bugs have their way, and, yes, the forest will recover eventually. Go after them via logging, and get some benefit from the wood; plus reduce the swarms of beetles, fungus spores, or whatever is attacking the trees. Then you can have your fires – small, scattered, and targetted – to eliminate some more of the parasites in the trash and slash.
Yes, a mere 30 years ago, logging was overdone in the Pacific NW, and the rules for clear-cutting were not restrictive enough. Yes, monoculture was practiced. The good news is that the environmentalists have forced protections for riparian zones, steep slopes, wilderness, endangered species; and they have caused scientific review of forest diversity and forest management practices in general.
The not-so-good news is that the pendulum swung too far toward preservation – which is not an ecologically-sound practice. ‘Old-growth’ forests will collapse – or burn – eventually. One of the ‘natural facts’ that y’all should discover is that ‘the one constant is change’. There is no static system in nature. Just as in politics, we have to engage, study, and understand the forest processes – partly to try to manage against catastrophe for both the forests and for ourselves. And part of that management is to take a sustainable portion of the resource for our own use.
“‘Bill O’Reilly rose from humble beginnings to become a nationally known broadcast journalist…’”
Journalist? O’Reilly? That’s really stretching the meaning of the word all out of shape. :-)
Elliott,
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to get a call from a landowner to look at their land and realize they were totally taken to the cleaners. There are some great foresters and loggers and then there are people I wouldn’t trust to clean a public bathroom after a big event. The landowner used to have a good bunch of trees and then … . Once the unscrupulous forester/logger got done with them, all they have are unhealthy trees in the wrong places without protection from the elements. We’ll turned down logging jobs, because what the landowner asked us to do wasn’t right for the track of land. We’ve refused to cut more when the landowner got greedy. We’ve worked hard to talk a landowner into doing what will benefit their trees, leaving healthy trees to be the parents for the next generation.
Forest health isn’t a once size fits all. Forest health depends on the species, the site orientation, moisture level, health of the trees, elevation, and other factors. Sometimes you have to clear cut, because of root rot and replant with a new species, since none of the old species will survive because of the problems with the soil. Sometimes all that is there are thin trees with a foot spacing between them. You won’t get a healthy forest until either fire or logging thins it out.
Those trees in the photo are a big fire waiting to happen. One that my very well lead to a loss of life. The Indians dealt with this for centuries before white men showed up by burning in the late fall or early spring. We haven’t had “natural” forests for centuries. Doing nothing isn’t the answer. Logging may not be the answer, but a proscribed burn might. Everything depends on the individual factors of the tract of land.
My husband is part of a group that combines forest industry types with environmentalists to do what is right for our local forests. It is an educational process, but one we have to do correctly, for everyone’s sake.
The red trees are beautiful in their own way. We were hiking up in the Vail Pass two weeks ago, and the colours — green, red, pastal green from the balds on the ridge — were just fabulous. The infestation varies a lot from place to place. It is pretty substantial east of the front range, but when we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, most of the forest was good.
Although I suspect most are on another thread by now, I’ll ask a question. Who here puts out traps for wasps? I ask, because the number one enemy of the pine beetle larvae is a wasp. I live in a Ponderosa Pine forested area and my husband and I leave wasps’ nests alone unless they are in a frequented entryway to the house or pathway. This allows the wasps to do their thing and go after the beetles.
Your report is a worthy outcome from being in the right place at the right time and saying “yes.” Thank you for your thoughtful discussion. In discussions of forest health and regeneration, I never see any mention about leaving the trees to rot, decompose and feed the soil. All plants drop dead material under where they live which then decomposes and contributes to the development of the soil in which the plant society – along with other societies make their home. Fire is the process of regeneration that has the most impact on us humans. But are we missing the soil for the fires? Any one have any thoughts or information on this point?
The Department of the Interior has authority over the BLM and the National Park Service. Some parks are letting fires burn these days, at least in Montana, and there was that big one that burned parts of Yellowstone a few years ago. Don’t know about BLM properties.
The USDA has jurisdiction over the national forest system, and a controlled fire (lightning caused) was taking place in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana about a week ago when I visited Glacier Nationa Park. (Lewis and Clark NF is just south of Glacier.)
I’m just sayin’
Exactly. And as you say in a later comment, “Forest health isn’t a once size fits all.” For instance, Doug Fir is a pioneer species – no fire or clear-cut, eventually no Doug Fir. In fact stable ‘old growth’ Douglas Fir stands is almost a myth.
It’s all about sustainability and maintenance of diverse species. There is better science in Forestry today than in ‘mainstream’ U.S. agriculture by a long shot. That doesn’t mean that we call it the end of the line for research; it just means that we know enough to do a reasonably good job, and we know enough to keep studying the issues.
You are correct. The question is – again – balance and appropriate response. Some forest litter is absolutely necessary.
In my opinion a good model for forest management can be found in both Japan and western Europe. As you travel through either, you’ll see woodlands on the slopes, small farms practicing crop rotation on manageable-sized fields, smaller footprint machinery – some of the things that ‘organic’ farmers and smart woodland owners do in this country.
Many of the woodlands in Europe are managed by local foresters that are paid by some level of government (depending on the national or local system). The forester lives and manages the forest for his/her whole career, instead of moving through the management system as in our case. Harvest is carefully planned and, usually, selective. One expression sort of sums it up in countries like Germany: ‘the local forester has names for all of the trees’. Of course, it took them centuries to develop a sustainable approach. We really shouldn’t take that long.
“Hayduke lives!”
It’s not entirely opportunistic. Drought weakened them, but apparently it was only a matter of time because old lodgepole pines almost always go to either fire or beetles and when it happens, it happens in a huge run.