By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post
SILVERTHORNE — The mountain pine beetles that have ravaged about 3 million acres of Colorado and southern Wyoming forests may be exhausting their primary food source — raising the prospect that the beetle epidemic could end, state and federal foresters said this week.
Regeneration of decimated forests has begun as the U.S. Forest Service hires loggers to remove dead trees.
"I think we've seen the worst of it," said Sky Stephens, Colorado State Forest Service entomologist.
For most of the past 15 years, dense-packed lodgepole pine forests gave the rice-size black bugs ideal conditions, "and their populations went up like crazy," Stephens said.
Now as beetles scramble for fresh wood to chew and sugar to sustain them through cold snaps, "they don't find the same food quality and quantity. . . . That, ultimately, is going to drive populations back down."
But huge challenges remain in handling dead forests, where trees typically fall after about three years, presenting hazards to people, 550 miles of power lines and water supplies.
Biologists continue to study the extent to which mountain pine beetles may adapt and... ( http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14204151 for the rest)









Red Flags dominate the west today. Smoke out of British Columbia covers the Northwestern half of the country. For now we remain in PL 3 nationally.



