Bark beetle invasion: Wyoming and Colorado forests ‘will never look the same again’

Global warming. Dwindling water. Massive wildfires. All are implications of the invasion.

By Shauna Stephenson, sstephenson@wyomingnews.com   Slash piles surround the parking area on Pelton Creek Road in the Medicine Bow National Forest, southwest of Laramie near the Colorado border. Grant Frost, a terrestrial habitat biologist for Wyoming Game and Fish, inspects a tree, looking for tell-tale signs of beetles. The tree looks alive, but it probably won’t be for long. The brown cadavers of lodgepoles past stand among smaller, greener pines, testifying to the unavoidable truth: Change — big change — is coming. “The general feeling is this will end when the food supply runs out,” Frost says. Looking out on the variegated landscape of greens, reds and browns, two things become clear. One: This is one of the biggest ecological changes we have ever seen. It’s daunting and scary and — for the experts — exciting all at the same time. A plague of beetles, including one that just now is taking its turn, is cutting a swath through the national forests in north-central Colorado and into Wyoming. At the low end, it’s possible that just 10 percent of large lodgepole pines will be left. It’s also possible that they all will be gone. But other and smaller trees suddenly are being chewed up as well. Where that leads remains to be seen. The implications of all this are impossible to pin down, but they could affect each and every one of us. They possibly include an increase in global warming, large-scale wildfires and big changes in water supply. And then there is this fact: These forests will never look the same again. Two: This change is inevitable. Try as we might, there’s no stopping it. …

Beetle attack will change our world via Democratic Underground