FUTURE FOREST

As a Forest Dies, Officials Plan What’s Next

By David Frey, 9-23-10

	Pines, spruces and firs are all suffering attacks from different beetles, and aspens are dying, too, prompting officials and environmentalists to rethink management of what rises among the dead trees. Photo: White River National Forest.

Above the sparkling waters of the Crystal River in western Colorado, while aspen leaves are turning golden, tall trees are turning brown and dying. It’s not why you might think. Not exactly.

Mountain pine beetles aren’t doing the damage. It’s Douglas fir beetles, killing off fir trees just like their cousin has killed off pines across the West.

Pines. Firs. Spruces. Aspens. They’re all dying here on the White River National Forest, killing off broad swaths of one of the nation’s most heavily-recreated forests, home to ski areas like Aspen and Vail, and high peaks like the Maroon Bells.

What that new forest will look like is up to nature. But the Forest Service wants to play a role.

“This is our chance,” said Jan Burke, forest health coordinator for the White River National Forest. “It is an opportunity and obligation in terms of stewardship to manage how our forest recovers and what we see as important needs to maintain habitats, all the way from the bark beetle up to human beings. What will the lynx need? What threatened and endangered species might we be considering in terms of maintaining habitats across the board? We are providing a new forest for us citizens as well. … The bottom line is, you’ve got this giant disturbance. We shouldn’t be wandering blindly into the next forest.”

In the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, the Forest Service plans to devote a lot of money to landscape analysis to consider what role the agency should play in shaping the new forest. How much? Forest Service spokesman Pat Thrasher said the agency hasn’t set a dollar figure, but he said dealing with the beetle epidemic “is probably the highest priority for the forest.” That comes in a year with two other major and possibly controversial efforts, releasing a travel management plan and addressing oil and gas leasing.

Some environmentalists are skeptical about the idea of intervening in the forest’s recovery, though.

“The part that makes me most nervous is the notion that we humans can engineer the next forest and know the outcomes,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop and president of the Colorado Bark Beetle Cooperative, a group of environmentalists, timber industry representatives, land agencies and local governments trying to find ways to handle the spread of the insect.

From putting out wildfires only to increase wildfire danger, to trying to contain the Mississippi River only to cause flooding, history is full of examples of attempts to control nature that have gone awry, Shoemaker said.

“We’ve been there before,” he said. “That’s hubris, that we are in control and we can control the outcomes.”

The issue on the White River National Forest is most of its trees are old and dying, too weak to fight off invaders like bark beetles. Recent droughts have only weakened the trees further, and shorter winters seem to aid the beetles.

Many of the forest’s lodgepole pines are 150 to 200 years old – older than the tree usually lives. Some of the Douglas firs are over 200 years old. Most aspens are over a century old, even though they reach maturity at 60.

Why? Because unlike some forests that rely on periodic wildfires to renew themselves, much of the White River National Forest relies on rarer but more catastrophic fires to clear the old trees out, Burke said, and it hasn’t had that. Colorado has never had the commercial timber industry that northwestern states have had. So the beetles are doing it instead.

“It’s just the perfect storm right now,” she said. “Things are old. The climate’s changing a little bit. And we’ve got a lot of big trees standing on the landscape.”

The mountain pine beetle gets all the attention. It has killed millions of acres of forest across the country, leaving a 2,200-mile swath of brown timber from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.

It has killed some 2 million acres in Colorado. The White River National Forest received a portion of a $13-million package of federal stimulus money to help Colorado deal with the infestation, often removing dead timber around trails and campgrounds.

But it’s not just pine beetles. A spruce beetle epidemic is on the rise. The Douglas fir beetle is taking a toll. So is a phenomenon called sudden aspen die-off.

“I think we are in for a period where we’re going to see some pretty dramatic changes happening,” Shoemaker said, “but that doesn’t mean there’s a crisis or it’s unhealthy or there’s something wrong.”

Over time, forests change slowly, he said, but when they change, they change dramatically. That’s what’s happening now, he said, and we just happen to be around to see it.

“It’s kind of a privilege to be observing a natural laboratory that otherwise we don’t have an opportunity to observe,” Shoemaker said.

The forest may come back differently than before. If it’s warmer, that may mean more deciduous trees, like aspen or Gambel oak, Burke said.

She said she would like to see the Forest Service play a role in encouraging more of a mixture on the forest.

“I’m not saying we’ll get out there and do gardening on 2.2 million acres, but you don’t stand down and do nothing,” Burke said. “By the same token, you don’t stand up and say you’re going to do something everywhere. But somewhere in the middle, there’s a stewardship role.”

Shoemaker is skeptical.

“I think we just need to step back and see how things are going to change and respond,” he said, “but we have a hard time doing that.”

David Frey writes in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Follow him at www.davidmfrey.com and on Twitter.

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