Beetles put forests at risk
FORESTS reduced to kindling by bark beetles are going up in smoke from Alaska to Wyoming this year.
In the Shoshone National Forest, where beetles have killed 625 square miles of spruce and 75% of whitebark pine, a recent fire whipped through bug-infested trees -- a pattern officials dread as fire season begins.
The bug invasion began about seven years ago and could lead to forest mortality that surpasses the damage of the 1930s Dust Bowl, says Barbara Bentz, a beetle expert at the U.S. Forest Service Research Center in Logan, Utah.
“It’s not just one species [of beetle] and one host,” says Bentz. “Almost every species of bark beetle is out-breaking now.”
Scientists think warmer temperatures weaken trees so they don’t produce enough sap to kill beetles. The bugs bore into bark, invite a few thousand friends and kill the tree within a year.
-- Joe Robinson
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