Colorado Springs News Gazette Editorial
September 3, 2007
Coloradans are being told that there’s no use fighting
bark beetles and other threats to the state’s forests.
The infestation is too vast, and some forests are too
far gone, the pacifists say, to get a handle on the
situation. It’s all part of a “natural cycle.” We'll
just have to let nature take its course. In a century or
two, things will be looking good again.
But not every state is taking such a defeatist approach.
“Forest Service officials say thinning of ponderosa
pines in the Black Hills National Forest in southwest
South Dakota and northeast Wyoming is helping slow an
epidemic of mountain pine beetles,” the Associated Press
reported a week ago. “Recent aerial photos show patches
of reddish-brown trees that were killed by beetles in
dense stands of timber, but adjacent timber that had
been logged and thinned was healthy.”
Thinning the overly dense, fire- and disease-prone
stands leaves the remaining trees in better condition to
ward off attacks and infestations, according to the
story. “We know thinning is a good way to keep our
forests green and healthy,” Black Hills National Forest
supervisor Craig Bobzien said. He says that trees, like
humans, are more prone to illness “if they're
malnourished, dehydrated and crowded.” Officials at that
national forest are working hard to give the trees a
fighting chance.
Black Hills National Forest is thinning more than 50,000
acres a year, according to the story. And while about 70
percent of the forest’s 1 million acres is believed to
be at risk, meaning they’re just chipping away at it,
officials there say they would be doing more if they
could. Staff shortages are the only thing holding them
back.
Contrast that with what we are seeing here in Colorado,
where Gov. Bill Ritter and most other “leaders” have
written off any effort to save the forests as futile.
Green groups are leading the media on tours of dying
forests, during which handpicked experts explain why we
ought to let nature take its course, no matter the
devastation to the state’s tourist economy. And that is
evidently being adopted as unofficial state policy.
What these extremists really fear, of course, is that
thinning the forests will also revive the dreaded timber
industry, and somebody might actually profit off the
public lands. They would rather see Colorado’s forests
perish or burn than see the state’s shuttered sawmills
operating again. Protect the forests by letting them
die: It’s a mentality we can't understand.
We keep hearing that Colorado’s representatives in
Washington are crossing party lines and working on a
legislative response. We've been hearing that for
months, but none of these promised measures are close to
being passed. And even if they were passed, so what? It
wasn't too many years ago that Congress passed a Healthy
Forests Act, heralded as an aggressive response to the
forest health crisis, of which wildfires are just one
symptom. Has it done any good? Evidence is scant or
contradictory.
We did recently read that the state was distributing a
whopping $1 million to local governments for
“demonstration projects” aimed at reducing wildfire risk
along the fringe of developed areas. One million
dollars! Dr. Evil would be impressed. But it strikes us
as a joke, given the billions of dollars this state
stands to lose in the decades ahead, when word of our
blighted landscapes spreads and the tourists stop
coming.
Maybe they’ll visit South Dakota’s Black Hills, which
probably will be much greener thanks to the aggressive
actions being taken there today. Those people who want
to see black hills will come to Colorado.
Next MPB Task Force Meeting: Thursday, September
20th, 2007
7:30-9:00 am, Best Western Lake Dillon Lodge at I-70
exit 203, Frisco
Theme: CTIA Timber Tour Recap & Forest Health
Perspective
