The study also says that dead and dying forests have no higher risk, or severiety than normally, overstocked, drought-stressed highly-flammable forests. Good thing I don't live in lodgepole country! Sooooo, how many MILLIONS of tons of greenhouse gases will go up in smoke, in the next 10 years? How much endangered species habitat will be converted into pure lodgepole stands, which do not support andangered species, and which die, rot and burn every 100 years, or so?

Sure, you don't have the crowning fines, but when your heavy fuel is bone dry tonnage, jackstrawed from weak root balls, with vegetative understory fines dried out, the result upon ignition will be, um, a great opportunity for Bill's company to consult on.
Would have been way better to plan and implement on all this. It is commonly known that lodgepole has a shelf life, is not real productive habitat compared to mixed stands, et cetera. It's also known that active timed interventions INCLUDING HARVEST as well as PRESCRIBED FIRE can establish other species such as larch, fir and p-pine in appropriate areas.
Forestry works. Should try it again, methinks.

I've also talked to Yellowstone's Renkin.
He too has been concerned about pine beetle outbreaks and closely studied an outbreak from the late 1980s. What he found surprised all kinds of people. The dead stands of pine beetle-killed trees showed no statistical increase of wildfire,...until the undergrowth had had a chance to grow and create ladder fuels.
That can vary quite a bit, given the killed trees, slope aspect, precipitation and undergrowth species. Yes, dead stands of trees do burn, but not with the explosive power and heat of crown fires.
What's markedly unusual about the ongoing beetle outbreak is that the "off" switch of bitter-cold winters is now absent and shows little sign of returning. This is as clear a signal of climate change as any -- certainly more visible to the general public than vanishing ice caps and glaciers.

Whether or not massive beetle kill makes a forest more or less fire prone is beside the point. The real question is what to do in response. Do nothing or salvage and prescribe burn it where possible? I say salvage and burn it.

Salvage logging is possible, but where's the market for the wood, and who would do the salvage work? Not many mills in operation these days.
Construction of logging roads can fragment wildlife habitat and lead to erosion and damage to streams.
Prescribed burns not always a panacea -- it all depends on what conditions are and what you want to achieve with a burn.
The absence of salvage logging or prescribed burning doesn't mean that nothing is going on with a beetle-killed forest. Natural decay can return nutrients to the soil for future use.

Who says we HAVE to build "logging roads" in order to salvage dead and dying timber?!? If there's no road already built, why bother with entering such an area when tens of thousands of roaded acres are ready to be salvaged? Such controversial areas and issues simply aren't worth the trouble.

How about a ban on the importation of products made with plastic that can be made out of salvaged timber?

In many western forests, fuels don't decay and "return nutrients", unless it is by wildfire, in the form of wood ash. Sadly, if the soils were overheated, the nutrients will simply wash off, into streams and rivers.

Excellent article. It is further validation of the excellent points made by George Weurthner in his article on NewWest three months ago
("Beetle Hysteria Again-- http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/beetle_hysteria_again/C41/L41/ ).

Beetle-killed trees are no more likely to burn (and in fact are less likely) than healthy green, needle-filled trees.

It's time for the timber industry and other developers to quit using pine bark beetles as their poster child for proposing clear cuts on public forests. Back off and let nature take its course.

-Jon Cheever.

Another study that uses the narrow "red needle" time phase to proclaim that bug killed forests aren't a fire hazard. The real hazard is in 10-20 years when the deadfall piles up. Where's the research studying that. Or should I say, where's the media coverage of that research. I've been to many fires that were fuelled by pine beetle killed deadfall from epidemics 20 years ago.

I think the best research on the subject would be to interview every USFS and State wildland fire incident commander and ask them their opinion on whether MPB killed forests are a fire hazard, whether in the short or long term. Those are the people that every local, state, and federal lawmaker are listening too. Such research might not be what the New West would like to hear.

Reluctance by enviro's to discuss the "long term" deadfall fire hazard is only proof that it's about the propoganda and not the science. I don't blame the scientists, I agree with much of what they say. I blame those who sieze upon on a small part and claim it proves the whole. No, it's not gonna all burn, and no they won't use it as an excuse to "log it all". And yes wildfire is wonderfull for the ecology-but if an asteroid hit the earth and mankind went extinct-an ecologist would claim it's wonderfull for the ecology because it was a natural event.

Is sociology even a part of ecology?

The issue is, has been, and always will be that of human influence and the "purity" of the forest sans human influence. The folly of the "untrammeled by the hand of man" issue is that those people living here successfully for ten thousand or more years prior to the advent of Europeans on the land, did a remarkable job of set fire burning, as evidenced by the widely studied patterns of forest and non forested lands on the landscape. It was only when directed genocide and diseases took out more than 90% of the pre Columbian landscape managers that the forests we see today began to appear. The memory, and the still visible vestiges of that once fire maintained forest that covered so much of the North American continent, of what once was in the nostalgic desire for "old growth" forests, is now to be obtained by letting wild fire burn? Not. Those forests were anthropogenic, created by the hand of man, and we can only regain some of them by judicious use of set fire and the hand of man.

Only the Wilderness Act of 1964 denies that people were on the land before that Act was passed by Congress, which is par for that body's understanding of and about anything, cloistered as they are in the marble towers, talking to each other and jousting for position on the power ladders.

Really, we can no longer get there from here. So why bother? Just let the Piss Fir Willies burn it all, as is their intention, and maybe at a time far in the future, a bright light not manufactured in China, someone of the lineage of Edison, will discover that man is the determining organism on this earth, and at some point in time will go extinct just like so many other species have, and probably for the same Darwinian reasons of not being able to compete any longer, and life will or will not go on as the sun continues to burn itself to oblivion.

There is a part of me which says why give a shit. And a part that says I am just another of the several billions of idiots in this world. It would appear that if you want wilderness or if you want logging, you had better get that entered as a chapter in the Koran, sooner than later, because that document seems to be the be-all and end-all for ordering the world, or at least, that is what we hear from our leaders, and that is what the leaders of the Islamic world want us all to hear. Convert or die, infidel. Sort of sounds like Christian clerics before the Rez was created, no?

It is a travesty that government now owns 40% of this country in terms of acres of land. That is not freedom, nor does that make for a free country. There is nothing common about our commons. Every foot of it is regulated or reserved for government. The Queen owns the swans of England, and the USFWS owns the swans of the US. We haven't changed that much. Discussing the fate of forests publicly held like it means something in the long term is folly. A diversion. Their current state is just an indication of what is to come for our noble experiment at having a federal republic with democratic elections. There is a tyranny of the majority that is not conducive to sustainable governance. The next two months will be telling. That I hear the elitist press and talking heads expressing distaste and arrogance at the unwashed from anywhere but the Ivy League winning elections is an indication that a change will take place, on some level. I do wonder if we are tough enough as a nation to endure that change if it were to come. Over the last thirty years, we have not developed a working plan to manage public forests that has lived up to the promises made, and maybe that is but a facet of the whole of our Federal government, that they can no longer deliver on anything, including a deciding victory at war. Maybe this whole country is being devoured by beetles at all levels, and the death of a thousand cuts has about bled us out. No manufacturing industry like we once had. Government controlling access to raw materials with nanny state zeal. A vastly reduced private side middle class, with an emerging favored class working for government as per their wages and benefits now double that of similar work in the private sector. Take enough needles off the national workforce, the non elites and non government employed, and you can run amok with government and Mega Business, hand in hand (GM? Chrysler? Banks? what is next?), to run our country for someone I don't know, by someone I don't know, for the benefit of anyone but me.

But you do have to understand the hilarity, the clarity, of a discussion of whether or not dead trees burn as well as green trees. The frigging trees are still burning, and that is the INTENT of the Federal government folks in charge. Burn as much as possible at every chance you get. All the discussion is about degree of difficulty in burning trees. That dead trees don't burn as well only means that they are like the green trees, really. Fire in green timber only burns the needles and then the fire roars on, leaving behind a forest of snags, just as fires do in an already dead forest. They both, then, are composed of mostly dead trees, since current fire fighting ignores that "mosaic of burned and unburned timber", and has Hot Shots "burning out areas of fuel inside the fire perimeter." That "mosaic" is just pretty words to put lipstick on their pig.

Is that what we really want for forests? Is that what Teddy Roosevelt and Pinchot created the USFS for, to have all the forests burned? I think they were about NOT having the forests burned, and that is why the original name for them were Forest Reserves. Reserved for what? Future burning? Future "fire for resource management objectives?" Don't blow your smoke up my ass. The issue was to have green forests for myriad reasons, and for them to be managed for multiple uses. My, how far we have gotten from that. Intellectual penis envy drives the process to rid public lands of any private enterprise. And then the NGOs, the private side of government, the fifth column of government as it is, will be able to have free run of the forests, to romp and cavort as they please, free from those evil capitalists and profiteers, while the NGOs enjoy their tax free status, and coin money from Congressional largesse. And life will go on, and the University or the Agency paycheck will keep on coming. News Flash: all of that flows from private capital profiting. Stop that, and that is pretty much the situation today, and you will by necessity, have far fewer jobs and paychecks in the government and other non profit jobs. You killed the goose and there are now no longer sufficient golden eggs to pay your way. How is that endowment working for you, eh? Rolling in dough, still?? Is the grant money beginning to run out? The electorate is not happy about or wanting to borrow more to fuel the end to more business. That dog no longer can hunt. (and no apology to Gov. Richards). Whether or not dead needles burn as well as green needles will get its hearing, and the result will a renewed will to not have either on fire unless the fire is set at the appropriate time of year, to burn a designated fuel in a designated area, for a recognized purpose. This willy nilly "fire for resource use" bullcrap is going to end. Humans will go back to doing what they have done for millennia, and that is prescribed burning done by the wiser of the elders, and not by some lawyer whose GS 13 status allows them to work as a manager in a natural resource agency, with zero education in resource management.

Wow! Ol' bearbait really went on a tear.
The experience of our Canadian cousins has some bearing:
Immediately following an outbreak, when needles and small branches are retained on standing dead trees, stand susceptibility to crown fires may be increased. Understory response to the outbreak will also affect stand susceptibility during this period by affecting the potential for ground fire to simultaneously occur.
• An elevated fire risk also occurs about ten years after the outbreak, when tree bark begins to slough off.
• The most extreme risk occurs after beetle-killed trees have fallen, approximately 20 to 50 years after the outbreak, when fuel-loading is at its maximum. Fuel quantity and arrangement may produce extremely high intensity fires.
-- http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/MPB/gawalko_2004_mount.pdf

These high intensity fires are worrisome because they can sterilize soils from heat intensity -- not a good thing, ecologically. Prescribed burns of standing dead trees tends to lessen later intensity by isolating otherwise burnable wood beneath charred wood.
There is such an immense volume of MPB-killed trees that there's no capacity among existing mills to handle it all, even if there was a market, which there's not. Not a good situation all around.

Brodie: Whether or not the red needles burn as well as green needles is a herring of the same color. The red needle trees are dead, and if you allow fire to burn in the green needle trees, they are dead too. So dead trees are what we see across the landscape. The damage is going to be from the next fire in the dead and down, the vast amount of one to twelve hour fuels that bake soil, which will remove top soil fines in the fire plume. Will remove ten tons of carbon or more from the organic matter in the soil acre. Will remove a ton or more of stored nitrogen from the soil. Will change the chemical nature of the soil, disallowing water infiltration and result in horrific runoff scenarios that alter watersheds, blow out sub basin streams into larger streams, covering fish spawning beds and resulting in large scale erosion which is why logging is not allowed, supposedly, to prevent road erosion. All that is blown away by the gross soil movement that follows fires. We hear about the wonderful success of lodgepole regrowth in Yellowstone, but nobody has written about all that eroded landscape that ran across the roads, plugged culverts, and ended up in the pristine creeks and rivers of the Park. If any human caused event produced that result, we would still be hearing about it. That sow's ear has been turned into the silk purse of "renewal." That is what you get when carcass beetles do the PR on murders. A time to celebrate. And God knows there are carcass beetles aplenty in the NGO green lobby. The death and destruction celebrants.

My history reading says the Forest Reserves were set aside from the unclaimed public domain to be what their name implies, Forest Reserves. To purposefully determine that they ought to burn, that fire is natural and needed, is to not understand the need for less smoke in summer, less watershed destruction, less loss of species common and endangered. The Strangelovian USFS and NGO determination to burn our public forests "for resource purposes" perplexes me, and my real wonder is how Congress can be so detached, so disassociated from the whole of it. Is the job so golden that the fear of not being re-elected, the fear of the Green Lobby, so great that the Congress collectively looks the other way while charlatans and frauds burn our public lands because they can? If that is the case, incumbency ought to be the Scarlet "I" stitched to the chest of all currently in Congress and in state legislatures, and a public shunning at the polls should be in order.

The old adage about "I did not speak out when....and I did not speak out when..." is relevant to the resources of this country, and their being hijacked by the left, using taxpayer money to fund their abductions in the form of grants, contracts and tax forgiveness due to non profit status. That non profit deal was there to keep the state from taxing churches, religion, and my how that has expanded!!! Now we have non profit terrorism home grown, as experienced near my home with the arson burning of the Boise Cascade offices several years ago by environmental extremists. So I speak out. Perhaps not always clear in my thoughts, but the intent is honest. Allowing the forests to burn because you can, because you deign not to put out a small fire when you could, and allow it to grow to conflagration size, is a crime against citizens. It is government gone wild. It is the resource managers showing their collective bums to the nation. It is an erect middle finger to the citizenry. But worst of all, it is poor government in action. Misguided, poorly budgeted, off course, free wheeling governance, all with an armed police force within its compound.

Some day, someone ought to enumerate the armed police force that our Federal government has doing its will right now. An all agency census of armed police and security personnel. It might out number the military. Border Patrol. FBI. ATF. CIA. USFS. USDept Interior (Park Service, USFWS special agents, BLM cops, BurRec guards, Indian Service Police, Capitol Police, a long list), and so many more I don't know about.

Meanwhile, those forest burners can't stop even ten percent of the illegal dope grows in roadless areas. No real concerted effort to stop foreign nationals from growing drugs on public land. Sad state of affairs. And when they do catch some, it is the local sheriff doing the police work on Federal lands. We had a shoot out in Southern Oregon with Mexican dope cartel garden guards this summer, and local cops won. I imagine there was a hat passed in the local Mexican community to send the body home for burial. I feel sorry for the turkey vultures cheated out of a meal. And, of course, the carcass beetles also having less.

The leading newspaper of my State published its annual review of hunting prospects, as per reports from the state game management agency. It reports fewer and fewer game animals on public lands as those lands become more and more a monoculture of landscapes and tree cover. The biologists say to concentrate your hunting near private land managed for growing forage or being managed for timber with open thinnings and clear cuts. On the public lands, look for older fire areas where there is some food and some animals. Forest diversity? only if they burn it, now. It has been two decades since the last clear cuts, two centuries since the original inhabitants were setting fires with a purpose and result in mind, and those were planted and are all tight stands of regrowth where sunlight seldom reaches the ground and the ungulates live on fungus, and moss and lichens blown from tree tops by wind. A windfall green tree is a banquet of feed for a few days. The sad deal is that a time traveler from five hundred years ago, a Native American, would not recognize the landscape, and could not live in it. That is how much benign neglect has altered it. That person would look for and find a burn area, and begin to use fire to change the area to one in which he could survive, which is the Edenic landscape sought in legislation which does not allow you to get from here to there. So, change legislators. That is the only hope for forests.

Double wow, bearbait.
Are you implying that the dominance of the timber beasts in the Forest Service for the first half of the 20th century was beneficial to the forests and the citizenry?
It was certainly beneficial to the timber companies, but the citizen subsidized millions of miles of forest roads, fragmenting wildlife habitat. Meanwhile, the clearcuts caused excessive erosion that grossly damaged streams.
The doghair stands of timber were not the result of nefarious plots by green NGOs, but of unnatural clearcuts. The vast buildup of fuels was the direct result of an ill-founded "out by five" policy that sought to stamp out forest fires. That fuel buildup, combined with drought and higher temperatures we'd expect to see in global warming, is creating once-in-a-century mega-fires that now happen annually.
Fire, as the Native Americans understood in centuries past, is a tool, as the modern Forest Service and conservation groups understand today. Our forests evolved in response to fire, whether set by Nature or Man. It is disappointing that you insist on evil, ulterior motives among those who disagree with your assumptions.

Bearbait needs some more beer and a few antidepressants. He keeps insisting that all the forest habitat types in North America were created by an Indian civilization which didn't have chainsaws or front end loaders. But environmental extremists can be just as wacky, insisting that massive beetle kill is just nature taking its course especially since the beetles in question were anthropogenic ally introduced from another part of the world. And that we should just stay out of the woods and let the holocaust commence.

BearBait and Garcia-

It’s great for you to mention that pine bark beetles are anthropogenic effects—man’s own actions have created the environment that has allowed pine bark beetles to thrive. The cause? Global warming from the burning of fossil fuels.

Until we as a species started to change the climate (an anthropogenic action if ever there was one), we had no problem in the west with pine bark beetles. Our cold winters in January and February killed the beetles, so they couldn’t overwinter, and never got a foothold (or insect leghold) in our mountains. But once we changed the climate with our burning of fossil fuels, we no longer saw the deep-freeze winters that we had in the past. So the pine bark beetles could move northward, spend the winter, and then attack full force.

So the real cause of the pine bark beetle devastation is man himself—our burning of coal and our burning of gasoline in our large Dodge Rams and Tundra pickup trucks are the real culprit. The carbon dioxide we're spewing into the atmosphere is warming our planet, much to the delight of the pine bark beetles.

So next time you’re out driving around cursing at all the dying trees in our Montana and Idaho forests, remember that it’s your own actions in burning fossil fuels that are the cause. Anthropogenic beetles? You bet. But the beetles are just a symptom of the problem we’re created ourselves—global warming through burning of coal and other fossil fuels.

The solution? Carbon taxes on fuels to pay the true cost of the environmental damage we are causing (including the forest damage). Yes, you'll scream about "no more taxes" and "communist plot to take over the world," but in effect you're just welfare queens begging for cheap subsidies of your precious fossil fuels so you can keep wasting energy and polluting without a clue of the real impact of your actions.

So don't go blaming the "environmental extremists" for the beetle kills--look at your own use of fossil fuels, and your own radical desires to keep gasoline and electricity dirt cheap, so you don't have to pay the true environmental costs of these fuels that warm the globe and keep the pine bark beetles marching northward.

Jon Cheever

Just because most people don't have a frame of reference for ten thousand years of prescribed burning does not mean it did not happen. We can see, those of us who pay attention, to how trees can and do grow, no matter the weather, the lack of rainfall or snow. The trees keep on growing. Germinating, growing. And there are so few very old ones, even in older stands. Where did they go and why are those that are still with us here?

I did not say that logging was the reason for anything, good or bad. I did quote today's university educated, honest, wildlife biologists who report that if you want to find a deer or elk to shoot in the forest, your chances are much better next to or on private land that is managed for successional tree growth and on ag land that is used to grow forage. Your chances diminish fast the further you get into public forest land because all the prairies and meadows have been planted to trees, or have naturally reforested themselves due to lack of set fire on a schedule to keep the vegetation in early succession vegetation. They and I only recognize that not logging has vastly reduced diversity of habitat on public lands, and not doing large scale prescribed burning has also greatly reduced diversity on public lands. Certainly unfought forest fires will produce burns, and they will in time become forests again. That is not the anthropogenic diversity that has been a force since the advent of this inter glacial period and the ending of the last ice age. Everything that the university educated forester, biologist, life scientists, have found here, in the time since 1492, has been derived from the ten thousand years of planned disturbance that provided for early human inhabitants. If a mountain top prairie was burned for hundreds, even thousands, of years, and then the burning abruptly ended, soon you have a forest not like any that was there in the prior ten or more millennia. Pioneer species take over, and seral stage succession begins. And the forest becomes less diverse, and we lose species in my area like Kincaids' lupine and Fender's blue butterfly, and other prairie specific species that existed because of native burning to renew strawberries, cat's ears, and several dozen other grasses and herbaceous species they used for food and fiber. Farming is what that is called today. By use of prescribed fire, species diversity was determined by what was left after fire. And those species that needed a forest over them were not sought after and had to make do in other places and forests that became fire resistant due to spacing of large trees, and regular fire under the overstory that burned sloughed bark, needles, and twigs and limbs. You get ground fire today, after Indians having been extirpated, and their fires absent two hundred years or more due to their population crashes from introduced diseases, and today's ground fire will burn that accreted detritus in a fire hot enough to kill the root system of an old growth tree that withstood fires for 500 years or more. Never has that fuel been there since primitive man arrived on this continent. They burned, and burned more. And in so doing, created the old growth forests, which are the cumulative survivors of multiple fire events, over the time of the trees' life times. If you had just one new tree grow on an acre every 100 years that survived the regular fires, and that tree's cohorts were trees that had survived as one in a hundred years, over a thousand years you would have 10 old growth trees, and whatever understory had grown in the interim since the last fire. Gee, the multi storied, complex old growth forest. Created by humans for humans, and now denied by the genocide crowd because ......well, just because it does not fit their science. Or their instruction. Or their observations because they haven't been observing that complexity for 50 years like I have. Never have I been in a forest where charcoal was absent. Never did I build a road that did not bring up charred wood with the soil. I see where trees were burned in human warming fires hundreds of years ago. I see where the trails once were, the rocks still worn, and the dirt still compacted.

The only reason I was there for so long is because I was a logger. But not a blind one. And logging did cause damage long ago. So did farming, road building, building construction, sewage disposal, energy use. All human endeavor changes and modernizes and becomes more kind to the earth. Not without fights and regulations, I know. But painting all activity with an ancient brush from a sepia tinted photo from a century ago is not honest nor is it reality. I have a kid who logs every day. All summer there was a minder from the land owner on the job making sure their thinning did not debark leave trees. They use skylines and fly every log, and every piece of the tree. He goes to classes regularly because he is a certified "green" logger, by some third party certification agency. He is a first responder because he has taken so many first aid classes. He can run a half dozen pieces of equipment, climbs and rigs intermediate skyline support trees and standing tail trees. The rape of your wilderness heritage all takes place on private land, and under scrutiny that assures the end user that all the precautions and manners of use that protect and preserve the land and the forests are followed. His work is more regulated than the creation of the food you eat, and probably a lot more sanitary. And all you who think that logging is some evil endeavor to ruin the world had better think about where you shit, and where the shit goes. I see the truck spreading it on grass seed fields all summer long, as fertilizer, in the belief that the inch of rain we got today will not wash it into the closest creek. hah. The specific kind of estrogen used in birth control pills is measurable and in the drinking water the further downstream you go on any river. Benign piss packs a punch. We have cross dressing salmon now. Big old bucks in full spawning color wearing lipstick and low rider scales trying to traipse over riffles in high heels.

Everything that people do on the nanny state that is the USA is regulated, and the less powerful your lobby, the more regulated you become, just because they can. So private lands are highly regulated, and land use laws determine what you can and cannot do on your own land. We do have to realize that someday nothing will be permissible, and then what? That is the direction and reality of private sector economic activity, and private sector economic activity is what is taxed to support the government that legislates, regulates, and rules by armed force.

So, yes, I do believe that humans here before the conquerors from Europe created the found environment that so many think we have "lost" because only "x%" of the old growth remains. Folks, we grow trees every year that pass from middle growth to old growth, and none is cut. The modern sawmill does not use a log over 24" on the big end. Many old growth are burned and destroyed by "fire for resource use", every year, but since that non NEPA vetted piss poor excuse for management is allowed and has yet to be challenged (if I bought a lottery ticket, and won, I would challenge the decision to not fight fires if I had standing), that is what we get and should expect from public land managers. The idiocy that allows fires to burn unhampered by suppression efforts in the middle of the most vulnerable times of the year is in use daily. That smoke is provident, and not at all responsible for CO2 in the air..is BS....and those fires "renew" habitat...so why was it reserved in the first place? And fire fighters can't be exposed to danger.... So why are they paid for dangerous duty? and the list goes on. That is because there is no sound policy underpinning to Federal fire decisions. Not fighting fire is not an option if you are not also setting more fire than you are fighting, at times and places where the fires do not go viral, become holocausts. Now is not the time to do prescribed burns in Los Angeles county. And when the time was right, people don't want the smoke. You will get the smoke. That is for sure. Someday you will get the smoke.

The Feds blow smoke up your butt today, and tomorrow, it will blacken the sky. That is the pattern you can count on.

Good article and thanks for sharing the news about yet another scientific study which confirms what scientists and researchers have known for quite some time.

I have to say, it isn't just firefighters or land managers who need to calm down about beetle-killed forests. It's the politicians (such as Senator Tester) and their apologists who really need to calm down and read the latest available science instead of spreading fear and false propaganda about "forest health" issues. In fact, read any of Senator Tester's promotional material for his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act and you'll see plenty of examples of where his political rhetoric takes precedence over the findings of the latest science and research.

Also, a very educational 5 minute video related to this study, produced by the NASA Earth Science folks, is available at this link:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/beetles-fire.html

As it now stands, in the US, nothing can be done for or to forests but observe their demise on public land. And all the while the citizenry is urged and legislated to conserve, to limit, to not, all in the name of CO2 reduction as forests burning and decomposing dead wood release vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Common sense says that is just plain wrong, no matter the justification.

The "latest findings" are saying that lodgepole forests are highly flammable, whether they are live or dead. I'm sure glad that's all settled now! How much did this study cost the taxpayers?!?!

All of the following are snips taken directly from:

"Recent Forest Insect Outbreaks and Fire Risk in Colorado Forests: A Brief Synthesis of Relevant Research"

Available at: http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_5161_ttv_s09/RommeEtAl_Insects&FireRisk;_CFRI_06.pdf

“There is no evidence to support the idea that current levels of bark beetle activity are unnaturally high. Similar outbreaks have occurred in the past.”

“The outbreaks now taking place are similar in intensity and ecological effects to previously documented outbreaks in the Rocky Mountains. There is nothing unusual about a hundred-year period of low activity followed by an extensive outbreak.”

“Although it is widely believed that insect outbreaks set the stage for severe forest fires, the few scientific studies that support this idea report a very small effect, and other studies have found no relationship between insect outbreaks and subsequent fire activity”

“Bark beetle outbreaks actually may reduce fire risk in some lodgepole pine forests once the dead needles fall from the trees.”

High density in lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests are not related to fire suppression, it is simply a natural ecological feature of these subalpine forests. Dense lodgepole pine stands are not an artifact of fire suppression. These forests have always burned infrequently and at high intensity. Fire suppression has not significantly altered the natural frequency or ecological effects of fire in most lodgepole pine forests.

The key point about lodgepole pine forests is that they were dense and burned infrequently historically, and they are dense and burn infrequently today.

Dense spruce-fir forests are not artifacts of fire suppression either. Fire suppresio has not significantly altered the natural frequency or ecological effects of fire in most spruce-fir forests. The dense spruce-fir forests today are very much like they have been in past centuries.

Recent fires have behaved just as they did historically in most high-elevation forests, such as lodgepole pine and spruce-fir. Large intense fires are the normal fire behavior in these kinds of forests and 20th century fire suppression has not caused them to be unnaturally severe.

Based on current knowledge the assumed link between insect outbreaks and subsequent forest fire is not well supported, and may in fact be incorrect or so small an effect as to be inconsequential.

The presence of dead and dying trees does not necessarily mean that the forest ecosystem as a whole is not functioning properly. From a purely ecological standpoint, dead and dying trees do not necessarily represent poor “forest health.” They may instead reflect a natural process of forest renewal. Dead trees and fallen logs perform important ecological functions such as providing wildlife habitat and returning nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

Insect outbreaks, even extensive ones that kill canopy trees over hundreds of thousands of acres, are natural events in forest ecosystems throughout the Rocky Mountains and have been occurring for thousands of years.

From a purely ecological perspective, an insect outbreak generally would not be regarded as an “emergency” but as an infrequent but normal episode of rapid change within an ecosystem that most of the time is changing slowly.

Potential Treatment Options:

Spraying with insecticide can be effective at saving high-value trees in localized areas, but is not feasible over large landscapes. Broad-scale spraying will kill many harmless and beneficial insects, including pollinators and butterflies. Forest Service is currently spraying Carbaryl, which they admit is toxic to fish and aquatic insects, at campgrounds and trailheads around Montana.

Once an outbreak has begun, forest management (ie logging, “thinning”, etc) generally cannot stop it, because the insects are numerous enough to overcome even healthy trees. For one, all stands across the landscape cannot be managed and second, drought and warm temperatures in summer and winter are major causes of beetle outbreaks, and forest management cannot entirely overcome these climatic effects.

Most entomological evidence indicates that once an outbreak has started, there's nothing that can be done to stop it. The outbreak ends when there are not more suitable trees for the beetles, or when weather or drought conditions change.

The effectiveness of harvesting insect-killed trees to reduce fire risk across an entire forest landscape is far less certain than the effectiveness of FireWise techniques to protect an individual home.

Most traditional timber harvesting techniques don't effectively reduce fire severity under extreme fire weather conditions, which is where our big fires come from.

A single thinning treatment cannot maintain lowered wildfire risk over the long-term because thinning typically stimulates rapid growth of the remaining vegetation. A one-time thinning may facilitate dense tree establishment.

From a purely ecological standpoint there usually is little or no need to remove insect-killed trees.

Natural ecological processes generally lead to the development of new forests after insect outbreaks, so a “no treatment” option can be a form of responsible forest management.

Yep, studies say that forest management is difficult. They also don't mention that humans live in forests and that lodgepoles have invaded into formerly fire-adapted anthropogenic p. pine forests.

Sure, by all means, let's not log wilderness areas and National Parks choked with pure lodgepole stands! However, ignoring unnaturally high stand densities, where lodgepole have invaded, won't stand up to peer review. I say we need to restore stand densities and species compositions to historical baselines. Show me where this policy would be bad for our environment.

Garcia, Baitster is correct about Indian influence. It is historic fact that Indians routinely burned everything and everywhere they found it appropriate or worthwhile to do so. Better hunting, better berry picking, safer transit through enemy ground, messing up the enemy's fire planning, better grass for weaving, it was all about improving the productivity of the forest for their human benefit.
Indians today are not afraid to log and intensively manage their forest resources. Nor are they afraid of setting aside special areas for their cultural needs and desires. When a fire gets away, or spills over, they salvage what they rationally and economically can, while writing off the rest and hoping for the best. Bottom line is their forests work for them, in the proportions they find optimal.
Trust me, the Indian foresters of my acquaintance wonder what the heck us white guys are thinking. Or if the white guys are thinking at all.
As for the markets, BF, there WAS a market for almost all of the last 20 years, the window of opportunity to get after the even-aged lodgepole. To say the market stinks now and therefore there's no point in having a discussion ever, is a crock.
The fact is, "natural" as in random wildfire is not a socially acceptable option except to fringe academics, activists and journalists. Even prescription, induced fires are limited in terms of timing and area covered. Never mind those idiots who screwed up with the red flag down by Helena. Pure genius.
Logging and/or induced fire costs money. Neither happen for free, plus "natural" fires in the wrong place and time are even more expensive and wasteful. So who pays? Duh.
The beetles running amok across the landscape are a shameful waste, and to do nothing to capture some value from the wreckage is absolutely irrational, even criminal.
Like I said, forestry works.

I was taught that lodgepole was more tolerant of colder temperatures, and that was why you saw it in bands at elevation, and almost always, P pine at lower elevation, and where at least 12" of annual precip fell. That lodgepole is invading prior P pine stands or areas of former P pine, means that the P Pine, which some say is anthropomorphic due to its values to man, and the strange and isolated places some stands have been found, evolved on that land in a warmer, wetter time, and was able to use its canopy and ability to seine water out of the mist and fog kept it going on a landscape, and most likely assisted by human set fires that kept a particular landscape intact that was useful to pre Columbian man. And that big coned sugar pine was right there with the P pine in many cases. And there is some inquiries as to whether or not western red cedar fell along the same lines. Valued and protected in isolated stands throughout a long period of time. Sort of like having a hard time finding an Alaska Yellow cedar of age that does not have a long scar way up its bole where long strings of bark were stripped to make cordage for aboriginal halibut and salmon fishing. You don't take it all. So most trees had some evidence of being used for bark stripping.

And setting fires to surface pitch for warming fires for millennia. And the resulting "cat faces." Which becomes a place that burns in low intensity ground fire, and in time, the trees topple due to stump rotting. Humans as a long time, long term part of forest ecology and shaping.

We also need to remember that fire was an offensive and defensive weapon in territorial disputes for eons. Forests got burned so other could not use them. Spatial separation of people by vast burns. And, the low vegetation and open spaces allowed you to see who was coming.

No matter how trees grow and die, and forests come and go, man has been a part of the equation for a hell of a lot longer than the universities studying forests, disease, and fire. If the assumption that man came here with the retreat of the great ice sheets, and the appearance of raw dirt ready to hold plants, man was here at the beginning of forests, and was witness and a participant in the movement of forests up slope, to the north, and was here for the changes in tree species and habitat needs. I know the spore records from the peat bogs in the Willamette Valley of Oregon tell us lodgepole pine was the predominant conifer here just 7000 years ago. The "old growth" doug fir hemlock forests that we try so hard to keep and grow are recent communities, in all respects of time on this earth. Old growth is really a description of an historically new condition. And it all has happened as man lived in and among the trees and the places without trees, and all the evidence shows that man shaped how forests appeared and created much of the diversity that is a forest primeval. Today, that is not possible on much of the remaining forest land.

I'm glad this was written. I'm amazed that anyone who has ever closely watched a forest fire (or better, fought one) could believe that dead forests are more of a forest fire threat than green forests in the heat of summer.

1. Anthropogenic Global Warming is Anthropogenic Nonsense. 2. Sure some Indians burned. But compared to Nature which sets thousands of wildfires every year with lightning and still does, and did long before Homo Sapiens came out of Africa, North American Indian prescribed burning is piddle.

Fine, Mickey, but you're wrong.
Imagine the influence you alone could have on the landscape around Sun Valley if you were handed a brand. Or authorized to wield that brand for your own purposes.
And that's just you. Try that over decades, or centuries....been about a hunnert centuries since the ice, right?
And what happens if you were stupid with your fire policy and had to live with the results?
Forestry works.

If logging will stop the spread of the mountain pine bark beetle let's do it!

I've read though that salvaged dead trees in Colorado didn't fetch a profitable price. Also, I can't think of anywhere where salvage logging has stop the spread. Can anyone give some help here?

Someone's confused. I advocate active Forestry and Fire Management, including salvage logging and prescribed burning. But I claim that the actual evidence indicates that Forest and Range ecosystems were handed down to us my naturally occurring fire over hundreds of thousands of years, not by man.

Logging doesn't directly stop bark beetles. MP Beetles only attack live trees, and the trees' defense is to produce pitch to push the insects eggs out of the tree. When forests are thinned, more water is available to make pitch. In the absence of frequent wildfires, the lodgepole pines have invaded into ponderosa pine forests, where they steal water away from the old growth pines. They also become ladder fuels to incinerate even the fire-adapted "yellow-bellies". When all ponderosa pines in an area are killed, it may take centuries for them to become re-established.

Goshawks and spotted owls do not nest in lodgepole stands but, they will in p. pine stands. Not many animals live in dense lodgepole stands

However, where lodgepoles have always dominated, little can be done, other than reducing fuels. The trick is how to go about doing that. Prescribed fire seems to be the best method for thinning lodgepole fuels in pure stands.

Salvage logging is more about mitigation than timber volume. Most salvage projects harvest timber on less than half of the burned acres. Some of them, MUCH less than half. Only 4% of the Biscuit Fire was salvaged.

Modern salvage projects also set aside ample amounts of snags for wildlife, as well. One measure of success for a salvage sale is how many small dead trees are turned into boards. Another benefit to salvage sales is the erosion that is reduced by getting small diameter branches on the ground, each of them holding back an amazing amount of soil from washing into streams and rivers.

Specifically talking about insect salvage projects, it depends on the amounts of dead trees and the species composition. If there is any species diversity, whether it is ponderosa pine, spruce or whatever, that still-living component should have the dead fuels reduced or eliminated. High elevation Roadless Areas choked with dead stands of pure lodgepoles should be in no danger, with very little value to be extracted for very little profit. We'll just have to live with the major impacts when these things burn. That being said, such areas have been proposed as new designated Wilderness Areas or "wildlife corridors" but, they are completely unsuitable for either label. Few endangered species utilize dead forests, and few humans enjoy recreating in dying doghair thickets.

The Pine Beetle attack in the Bozeman area may be done. I haven't seen any new trees turning red this summer. When the red needles from last years kill drop, the sea of red will be gone, at least until the next attack in 10 or 20 years. All trees die in time and this is natures way of thinning the trees or choosing what trees are suitable for a area.

Wrong, Terry, on all counts.
The reason there hasn't been so much new mortality this year is because of more moisture for defensive sap. For example, part of the reason there's so much dead PP on the Flesher Pass highway is because the trees all robbed each other of water during the worst of the drought.
If it's dry next year, it will start all over...unless of course we get some of those charming, crispy 40 below days.

Fact is humans have influenced and managed the land for thousands of years. Why then should we not act on this problem. Other than for designated wilderness areas, the purpose of most of our public land holdings is multi-faceted.

Loss of forested habitat is just that, a loss of habitat for not one or two species but for all. People of this country can and should insist on taking action to better manage their forests for existing and future generations. Logging, salvage logging, thinning, prescribed burning, green stripping; replanting, etc... all should be used as appropriate to help restore the productivity of these damaged landscapes.

Affected, insect killed, multi-use forests need human help to recover quickly and continue to provide clean water, clean air, paper, and homes for future generation. History and science show that a damaged forest does't produce the same amount of benefits or lead to improved values.

Waiting for nature to reduce the trees to soil, with or without fire takes time. A great deal of time in the arid Rocky Mountain regions no less. Time is something we should use wisely - by taking action sooner to restore functions such as conservation of soils, sequestration of carbon, production of O2, cleansing of water, etc.... Or we can squnder time foolishly by conscientiously ignoring the role we play. Human inaction is not a norm. Action has been and forever will be part of the "natural order" as long as humans exist on this planet.

Leaving significant areas bug killed dead trees on public lands is a tremendous waste of land and impacts future generations of animals and humans. Take the McDonald Pass area, where the lands are intrinsically suited to being forested and both local humans and animals rely on the availability of the forest. The kill rate over this vast forested area is nearly 90%. Is there any doubt that the living trees that occupy (ied) these lands afforded clean air, clean water and habitat values to sustain the deer, elk, bear, trout, and people who live there?

Undeniably, our climate is changing. Get over it. It's been that way since the dawn of time. There is also little doubt that we have an influence on the speed at which such change occurs. In-action means settling for reduced natural function and values not only for ourselves but also for future generations. We need to act more so than at any other time in the past since we have an opportunity and ability to positively influence climate and enviroment in these damaged areas by the simple act of planting heathy trees to replace those that have been lost.

The focus should be on selecting the correct level of action for infected areas and promoting species that will most successfully meet the needs of future generations and maybe even resist future beetle infestations. So, is there a compelling reason to delay reestablishing the forest so future generations of animals and humans are continuosly afforded clean water, clean air, shelter, food, homes, etc? Is say not.

Terry…are you kidding!!!??
Drive I-90 east between Bear Canyon and Bozeman Pass…and watch the south side of the raod...the numbers of newly dead and dying trees just this season is amazing. You may not see a lot on Geen Mountain to the south of Trail Creek, because the developer is removing the dead ones…tough to sell those nice expensive lots when the trees are ugly. Overall, the number of trees affected from this year to last is huge. And now I hear I have to worry about my doug firs. Ugh.

What is going on with the research in this area? Where is MSU with all its brain power….does anybody know???