Fight Looms in Colorado Over Forests Killed by Beetles. By Jefferson Dodge, Boulder Weekly, April 29, 2010. "There is fresh debate about what to do with the millions of acres of pine trees in the West that have been destroyed by the mountain pine beetle. And it is a debate that is bleeding over into a battle about how to best protect Colorado's roadless areas… Officials say as many as 100,000 beetle-kill pine trees fall every day in a 3.5 million acre area along the Colorado-Wyoming border. It's too late to do much to stop them… the question becomes, 'What we should do with all of those dead trees?' One response has been to log or at least thin the dead forests, in the name of reducing the risk of forest fires… Recently a group of scientists blew the whistle and said not so fast.
"In a report titled Insects and Roadless Forests [PDF, 40 pp], four researchers concluded that the fire danger in beetlekill pine forests has been greatly exaggerated. According to the report, released earlier this spring, the chances of widespread fire among those dead trees is the same as -- or, as only a few studies indicate, slightly higher than -- in live, green pine forests. The report also found that logging or thinning in secluded roadless areas neither controls future beetle outbreaks nor helps protect communities and homes from forest fires... One of the authors [told Boulder Weekly]... 'If you're really concerned about forests, you need to do something about climate change, You're addressing the symptom, not the problem.'"
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