Bark beetles are attacking trees all over Colorado, but their effects are widely up for debate. State officials and scientists have recently expressed differing opinions on the beetles and the impact they have on wildfires, with some expressing concern that the state has an ulterior motive for its aggressive response to the bugs.
Colorado state officials launch task force
In December, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order to address the beetle outbreak. The order established a task force to protect communities, forests and water resources for the foreseeable future.
It also included details on mitigation efforts, linkingthe beetles to wildfires.
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“Mountain pine beetles have devastated millions of acres of forest across our state, increasing the risk of wildfires and threatening the health of our forests,” U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen said in a press release.
Due to the wildfire threat, the state announced it will remove trees infected with the beetles. Now, however, scientists are speaking out, saying the state’s claims are not accurate.
What studies show
Numerous studies published in the last decade have found that, while there’s still much research to be done, the beetles may not have a significant impact on wildfire risk.
“While research is ongoing and important questions remain unresolved, to date most available evidence indicates that bark beetle outbreaks do not substantially increase the risk of active crown fire in … forests under most conditions,” a report from the Natural Areas Journal found.
Another report found the beetles could have both positive and negative impacts on wildfires, but there simply needs to be more research.
“The messaging that is aimed at alarming the public about increased fire risk due to beetle-caused tree mortality is not consistent with the published research,” Thomas Veblen, a retired University of Colorado Boulder geography professor, told Summit Daily, a Colorado newspaper.
Ulterior motive?
So, if increased wildfire risk is uncertain, why remove the impacted trees?
Dominick DellaSala, a senior conservation scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute, an Oregon-based nonprofit, told Summit Daily that it could be an economic move. He noted that many policymakers and companies prefer to remove trees early, especially larger ones, because they’re the most profitable.
“Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got economic interests,’ they [the state] cloak it in misinformation that these trees are going to all burn up and they’re contributing to fast fires,” DellaSala said.
He added that thinning forests may not even help Colorado manage wildfires, noting that most of the state’s fires come from dry lands and high winds.
Howard Brown, a Colorado resident and former environmental policy analyst, told Summit Daily that the fire threat posed by beetles is “really a red herring.”
“It’s a false pretense being used to scare people and get away with destroying the forest for very dubious purposes,” he said, adding that government leaders and the logging industry may be exploiting wildfire fears to advance policy.
The Colorado Department of Natural Resources has not responded to a request for comment from Straight Arrow News.
