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Editor's note: This is the fourth weekly installment in a series on how Summit County is addressing the threat of wildfire through the Summit Wildfire Council, comprised of public-lands managers, fire departments, county and town officials, state forestry agents, neighborhood groups, local businesses and private citizens.
The bad news is that many of our trees are dead and dying, as seen in those distinctive red and gray stands of lodgepole pines throughout Summit County and beyond.
The good news is that the culprit — a beetle the size of a pencil eraser — finally is eating itself out of house and home.
Between 2009 and 2010, a 16 percent decline in mountain pine beetle activity was reported in Colorado. The infestation spread to 878,000 new acres, compared with more than 1 million acres in 2009, according to the 2010 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests, produced by the Colorado State Forest Service.
“Despite widespread areas of new infestation, the total area of active infestations is declining statewide because large areas of susceptible forests were impacted during previous years,” the report indicated.
Although there is still a great deal of new tree mortality in Colorado, the reported decline in pine-beetle activity is good news for many.
The pine beetle is native to North America, and it plays an important role in the ecosystem. The beetle tends to attack overcrowded, stressed, diseased and older trees. When unhealthy trees are killed through this natural process, resources such as sunlight, nutrients from the soil and water become available to other plants and young new trees in the understory.
While this kind of ecological succession is typically a process that occurs over long periods of time, the current pine beetle epidemic has changed the face of the landscape in a very short period of time.
The epidemic figuratively may be the foliage-regenerating wildfire that humans have suppressed for the past 100 years.
A Mountain Pine Beetle factsheet — available at the CSU Extension Office in the County Commons — provides information about solutions for landowners to avoid epidemic conditions like this from recurring. By thinning susceptible stands of trees and creating defensible space, as well as implementing community-wide hazardous-fuel reduction projects, new conditions will reduce the likelihood of future epidemics of this proportion.
Things you can do to improve the landscape and minimize the likelihood of future attacks as devastating as the current one include:
• Work with neighbors to remove dead and dying trees on private property while tying those efforts to community-wide defensible-space plans.
• Use the Colorado State Forest Service “zone” approach when planning defensible spaces around homes.
• Retain healthy trees where possible, and plant seedling trees in areas away from structures.
For more information on the pine beetle and the Summit Wildfire Council, please see the website http://summit.co.us/wildfiremitigation/.
The bad news is that many of our trees are dead and dying, as seen in those distinctive red and gray stands of lodgepole pines throughout Summit County and beyond.
The good news is that the culprit — a beetle the size of a pencil eraser — finally is eating itself out of house and home.
Between 2009 and 2010, a 16 percent decline in mountain pine beetle activity was reported in Colorado. The infestation spread to 878,000 new acres, compared with more than 1 million acres in 2009, according to the 2010 Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests, produced by the Colorado State Forest Service.
“Despite widespread areas of new infestation, the total area of active infestations is declining statewide because large areas of susceptible forests were impacted during previous years,” the report indicated.
Although there is still a great deal of new tree mortality in Colorado, the reported decline in pine-beetle activity is good news for many.
The pine beetle is native to North America, and it plays an important role in the ecosystem. The beetle tends to attack overcrowded, stressed, diseased and older trees. When unhealthy trees are killed through this natural process, resources such as sunlight, nutrients from the soil and water become available to other plants and young new trees in the understory.
While this kind of ecological succession is typically a process that occurs over long periods of time, the current pine beetle epidemic has changed the face of the landscape in a very short period of time.
The epidemic figuratively may be the foliage-regenerating wildfire that humans have suppressed for the past 100 years.
A Mountain Pine Beetle factsheet — available at the CSU Extension Office in the County Commons — provides information about solutions for landowners to avoid epidemic conditions like this from recurring. By thinning susceptible stands of trees and creating defensible space, as well as implementing community-wide hazardous-fuel reduction projects, new conditions will reduce the likelihood of future epidemics of this proportion.
Things you can do to improve the landscape and minimize the likelihood of future attacks as devastating as the current one include:
• Work with neighbors to remove dead and dying trees on private property while tying those efforts to community-wide defensible-space plans.
• Use the Colorado State Forest Service “zone” approach when planning defensible spaces around homes.
• Retain healthy trees where possible, and plant seedling trees in areas away from structures.
For more information on the pine beetle and the Summit Wildfire Council, please see the website http://summit.co.us/wildfiremitigation/.
