Mountain pine beetles now threaten Colorado's more populated areas - Coloradoan
Thomas Clayton
Mountain pine beetles now threaten Colorado's more populated areas
Rebecca Powell- Mountain pine beetle outbreaks are expanding into lower-elevation ponderosa pine forests in Colorado.
- The dead, red trees resulting from beetle infestations increase the risk and severity of wildfires.
- State forest service leaders say Colorado should work toward long-term solution with proactive forest management.
Colorado isn't necessarily known for having vibrant red in its fall colors, but forest managers say the rusty hue is likely to take over more of the landscape due to outbreaks of mountain pine beetles — and it's not a good thing.
This will affect Front Range counties, including Larimer, according to Matt McCombs, Colorado state forester and director of the Colorado State Forest Service.
McCombs and Dan West, the state entomologist, are touring the state to warn counties about the development, and they spoke to Larimer County commissioners on Jan. 21.
The outbreaks won't just create an eyesore. They increase the risk and impacts of wildfires, which spread faster through dead trees and have ripple effects on things like tourism, water quality and homeowner insurance costs.
Colorado has long been the site of mountain pine beetle outbreaks. They killed up to 90% of trees in some of the state's lodgepole pine forests — affecting 3.4 million acres and 80% of forests — from the late 1990s to around 2013.
Now the insects are expanding into lower-elevation ponderosa pine forests in Larimer, Gilpin, Clear Creek, Boulder, Jefferson, Park and Douglas counties, even as they continue to invade lodgepole forests that evaded outbreaks before, according to the state forest service.
This means this time around, it will affect "places where there's a lot of life and property," West said.
Mountain pine beetles, or Dendroctonus ponderosae, are native to North America and endemic to Colorado forests, meaning they're always there, and they have ecological benefits because they kill diseased trees, allowing healthy trees to thrive.
But when conditions are hot and dry, as they have been, the population of beetles can explode and wreak havoc on forests.
It's highly likely there will be an increase in their activity this summer, West said.
In Larimer County, the current situation isn't as bad as some other counties. Outbreaks have been observed near Storm Mountain west of Loveland but are mostly small occurrences elsewhere in the county, according to a map created by the state forest service.
It only takes a year for a tree to turn red after it's been attacked by a beetle, West said. That means a tree that was infected last summer could be green today but turn red by this summer.
"I will never forget the moment when the data hit the table," McCombs said, referring to the information coming in from West's aerial surveys. "When (beetles) move past that endemic towards that epidemic level, they can be extremely impactful across the landscape."
Gov. Jared Polis is convening a state task force so national, state and local players can think through both short-term and long-term impacts, McCombs said.
Getting the beetles back to an endemic state means it's "not about chasing the red trees," West said. "Those trees are already dead."
Instead, it'll require looking at where the beetles are heading and what work can be done to affect the future, he said.
Commitment needed to never 'get in this pickle ever again,' forester says
Colorado forests are facing this scenario because they're out of balance, partly due to past management practices and partly due to the changing climate, West said.
"We need to respond, and respond aggressively," McCombs said. "We also need to make a commitment to ourselves that we're never going to allow ourselves to get in this pickle ever again."
A lack of disturbance to the trees has created homogenous forests, McCombs said, and without different age classes and species of trees, "it's a ready-made sort of smorgasbord for a beetle population and its descendants."
"We suppress fire super effectively, and we now know there are costs associated with that in the long run. We also, to some degree, suppressed management," McCombs said.
"If we don't have the ability to either manage for fire or apply fire in ways that are satisfactory to the public or safe to do, then we have to find an alternative mechanism" to create renewal that becomes resilience, McCombs said, because "nature likes to get poked."
That takes courage, he said, later admitting, "even I feel still a bit of a twinge."
"I have a dream that someday the Lorax and Smokey Bear will be in the same commercial," McCombs said, explaining that Smokey will tell Lorax: "It's OK to cut trees some of the time." And Lorax will tell Smokey, "You know, it’s OK to let some fires burn some of the time."
While there are costs associated with any response, a reactive approach that focuses on recovery and suppression could cost seven times more than proactive measures like mitigation and treatment, he said.
Signs of a mountain pine beetle outbreak
Before a stand of trees turns red, look for these signs, according to the Colorado State Forest Service:
- Popcorn-shaped masses of resin, called pitch tubes, on the trunk that may be brown, pink or white.
- Boring dust in bark crevices and on the ground immediately adjacent to the tree’s base.
- Woodpecker damage, where the birds have stripped portions of the bark in search of larvae, leaving accumulations of bark at the base of the tree.
- Presence of live mountain pine beetles (eggs, larvae, pupae and/or adults).
- Exit holes on the bark’s surface where adult beetles have emerged.
- Foliage turning yellowish to reddish throughout the entire tree crown, which usually occurs eight to 10 months after a successful attack.
What to do to prevent or manage an outbreak
- Inspect pine trees in the fall after mountain pine beetle adults fly to new host trees. After the beetles infest a tree, the best practice is to remove the tree by the following spring and make sure infested wood is disposed of properly to avoid spreading the beetles.
- Small infestations can be eliminated through quick action, such as the removal of infested trees.
- There are preventive sprays for small acreages or individual trees, West said, but they're not a silver bullet: "You're not going to spray your way out of it. It just buys you a little bit of time so you can do the management in your window."
- Set up a management plan before the beetles show up. Create resiliency through age and species diversity, West said.
- Communities should think and act together, McCombs said: If one community member acts while an adjacent community member doesn't, it simply moves the problem from one lot to the next.
- Find specific options for treatment by clicking on the yellow "Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak" banner at livewildfireready.org.
 | Tom Clayton Communication and Media Specialist, Public Affairs |
| Commissioners' Office 200 W Oak St, Fort Collins, 80522 | 2nd Floor W: (970) 498-7005 tcla...@larimer.org | www.larimer.org |