Red Lodge Clearinghouse

While a bark beetle infestation has browned a million acres of evergreens across Colorado, experts say the infestation is creating hidden benefits for the forest by increasing water runoff to streams, providing opportunities for new vegetation and creating more varied wildlife habitat.

"Some people think of the beetles as destroying our forests. That's not really the case," said Jim Maxwell, a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service. "What they're doing is they're killing off the mature lodgepole pine, but the forest is already renewing itself," he said.

The beetle, a native species that lays its eggs in bark, has infested Colorado trees that biologists say are particularly susceptible because a century of wildfire control and logging restrictions has created forests composed of trees almost uniformly 80 to 100 years old.

The die-off's most important contribution may be increasing water yield by 30 percent, as dead trees absorb less water and block less snow from melting on the ground instead of evaporating into the air, said Lee MacDonald, a professor with Colorado State University.

Foresters suspect that all of the mature lodgepole pines have been killed in some places and 90 percent may die statewide, but the epidemic won't claim every tree, Maxwell said. Aspen roots, some of which have lain dormant for two or three centuries, already are sending up shoots in places where pines have died, he said.

New plants and trees are expected to replace the dying pines within 20 to 30 years.

"The forest is still a forest," Maxwell said. "It's just in that death-and-rebirth phase" (Steve Lipsher, Denver Post, April 7).

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