Rocky Mountains: Bark Beetle is now the primary driver of all forest management activities
The bark beetle epidemic and its effect on regional forests dominated
discussion at a briefing on forest health held by the Joint
Agriculture, State and Public Lands, and Water Resources committees.
Federal and state officials said bark beetles have become a leading
factor in forest management since the epidemic was triggered by an
extended drought in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“Right now (the
epidemic) is so big there’s really nothing you can do to stop it,”
said Bill Crapser, Wyoming state forester. “So really what we have to
focus on now is public safety … and what we want the future forest
to look like and start to position ourselves to move to that.” Cables
said he has requested more than $200 million in emergency funding from
the Forest Service for the next three years to address the problem. As
part of the project, the Medicine Bow National Forest in southeastern
Wyoming is working on an environmental analysis of plans to protect
infrastructure from falling trees, he said.
“It’s going to be cheaper
now than it will be later, because once the trees fall over it’s going
to be horribly expensive to try to get in and do this work,” he said.
Forest managers said Thursday that they see logging and forest fires
as key tools for managing Wyoming’s existing forests and helping grow
healthier forests when new trees sprout in areas devastated by
beetles. Crapser said a viable sawmill industry is critical because
the mills create a market for the trees removed from forests,
including those killed by beetles. The Wyoming sawmill industry has
been struggling in recent years. Mills have closed in Cody and
Sheridan, although Intermountain Resources plans to reopen a mill in
Saratoga this year. Nancy Fishering of Intermountain Resources said
beetle-killed lodgepole pines are most valuable for wood products if
they’re harvested from three to five years after the tree dies, but
can remain useful for up to 10 years.
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/01/16/news/wyoming/26-fallingtree.txt
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