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LATEST LETTERS

Beetle & forest reporting

Thursday, August 9 at 2:00 PM

John Calhoun of Silver Plume writes:

Re: “Bark beetle’s devastation...” (Rocky Mountain News, Thursday 8/2/07, p.8)
I wish Ms. Torkelson had questioned authorities like Dominik Kulakowski a little more closely.
Colorado’s 19th century gold rush began in about 1859. The silver rush followed in about 1864. Those years are so nearly 150 years ago that it doesn’t matter.
If a bark beetle infestation and forest kill-off occurred in the Front Range c. 1860, little is made of it in the history of Colorado’s early mining, and it is surprising — to say the least — that so many thousands of trees went into underground mine support and the “square set” scaffolding used within the mines. It is only a little less surprising that mine operations could have found so many tens of thousands of trees to fuel the boilers that provided steam for machinery in the mining industry.
Were all (or most all) the trees involved in mining the reddish beetle kill trees we see today?
Perhaps the then-primordial forest was largely spruce and fir, with little or no lodgepole pine, and therefore was not susceptible to beetle kill. If so, it would have been nice to learn that in the article — and relate the fact to the assertions about a 150-year cycle.
Further, it is widely held that in our Front Range forest most of the trees are the same age, the result of the mountains being virtually denuded during the 19th century mining boom. Does that account for the prevalence today of lodgepole? If so, how and why?
Come to think of it, a paragraph might have been spent on discussion of the science behind the assertion that there IS a 150-year cycle, and on further exposition of what the phrase means exactly. Since the beetle kill seems to be dependent on an extended warm, dry spell, is the 150-year cycle a weather cycle, and only incidentally a beetle cycle?
And finally, discussion of the implications of a blight (canker, is it?) affecting aspen seems to me important. Commonly, when a forest dies, whether from fire or disease, the aspen rebound first, holding and mulching the soil and providing shelter for the later growth of coniferous trees, which ultimately supersede the aspen. I believe there is scientific concern that the aspen may be fatally diseased throughout their current range. That may well affect the prospects for renewal following the beetle kill.
I realize that generally reporters are required to report what somebody says, rather than to investigate and challenge with deeper questions what they are spoon fed — but it’s a pity.

This letter has not been edited.

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