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What Will The Forest Be Like?
By Eliza Bicknell of Lotus Petal Yoga
As I hiked in today in rocky Mountain National Park with my 4 ½ year old Son I couldn’t help but wonder, what will the forest be like when he is an adult? For my entire life I have enjoyed the forest and the mountains, hiking, camping, backpacking, rock climbing, mountaineering, caving, canyoneering and ice climbing. During this time, I have seen the mountains change. I have seen hundreds more people on the trails and doing the technical sports I still love to do. I have seen erosion, pollution, litter. I have seen invasive species cover once pristine areas and I have seen biodiversity decline as more and more habitat is lost to overgrazing or more and more acres are cut down for more pasture. Certainly overuse and habitat loss as well as invasive species change the nature of the environment and the nature of the forest. But today I pondered something perhaps far more significant, the death of the trees. In Rocky Mountain National Park, about ¼ of the trees are dead. All along the I-70 corridor as you drive straight through the Colorado Rockies, you see acres and acres and acres of dead trees. The cause of death is the pine bark beetle. The pine bark beetle is native to the forests of western North America, and are the most important insect pest of Colorado's pine forests. They often kill large numbers of trees annually during outbreaks. What usually stops them or keeps their populations in check is the cold of winter. In the past, pine beetle outbreaks have collapsed after weeks-long cold spells with temperatures under 20 degrees below zero in the higher elevations. But as global warming takes its toll and we experience drought and warm winters, the trees have become stressed leaving them especially open to beetle-infiltration and too weak to ward off attacks. The outbreak began in 1996 and in 2007 alone, the beetle infestation grew by an astonishing 1,500 percent. Currently dead and dying lodgepole acreage now has grown to 1.5 million. It used to be centered along the western slope but now it has spread to the Front Range, exploding in Boulder and Larimer counties. Experts say “Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado and southern Wyoming will be dead within three to five years, killed in a mountain pine beetle infestation unprecedented in the state.” It affects pure lodgepole forests the most, as well as many of the trees within mixed systems of lodgepole, spruce, fir and ponderosa that cover several million acres in the state and it will take decades for the stands to return if they do at all. With a change in climate, it is unlikely the same type of forest will grow back. The death of the trees will leave soil exposed which will cause sediment to pour into waterways, affecting wildlife habitat as well as recreation. Who knows how many species we will lose as a result of this outbreak? And what will grow? What will the next ‘forest’ be like? The forest that my son will explore, the one that I hope he will enjoy hiking, mountaineering, rock climbing etc in will be a very different one than the one I have experienced. For this I am forever saddened. If you could see it happening before your own eyes, it would break your heart too.
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 | | Poddys appreciated this intel. Feb 9, 2011 |
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That was a very interesting and obviously heartfelt. Alas, Global Warming is only likely to help the pine bark beetle as "What usually stops them or keeps their populations in check is the cold of winter." Still, like the Gulf Oil Spill, perhaps that probable tragedy will be part of a sudden ecological reawakening. Here's hoping!
Thank you for sharing this well research and well written intel, Eliza. Our land of plenty is starting to show the effects of the greed and careless actions of corporate America. The waste in this country would supply the needs of many.
Best to you.
Frederick
Sad, sad, sad. But nobody's going to say, I'm going to stop driving cars powered by gasoline, I'm going to stop using electricity produced by coal. It's just too inconvenient to do otherwise. Too late anyway.
The pine bark beetle has destroyed much of Palomar Mountain and other places here in Southern California... darn. Thank you for sharing this great intel.
Very sad news for sure. Maybe a solution will come to light before it's too late. Thanks for the Intel.
British Columbia has the same pine beetle infestation. The further north one goes, the worse it is. Although we have some beetle kill in our area (Okanagan Valley) it has not affected our trees, YET. Our winter has not been extremely cold so we fear that we are in for more destruction this coming year.
Thank you for writing this 5* intel.
These are scary times that we live in, with so many effects of climate change being already evident. I wonder if different types of tree might flourish here instead?
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