Pine beetle infestation impacting salmon runs. Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun.
Just a reminder to those politicians and others who say we need a rapid plan to save the pines in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, etc. The pine beetle infestation covers the pine forests from Alaska south to northern New Mexico. It will have varying impacts such as the salmon story above throughout the entire Rocky Mountains and many adjacent mountain ranges. No statewide or local program can save them, and in many places most are dead already.
Note: I am not speaking of pine in a generic sense (not to mean conifer). I mean lodgepole pine, white pine, whitebark pine, etc.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
Did it get cold enough in the Yellowstone area this winter to kill some of the mountain pine beetles?
Hello,
My name is Becky and I have been effected by the pine beetle’s devistashion. Just two weeks ago I was in Merit and I was so stund by what I was seeing. I was so over whelmed by it that I still cry about it from time to time. I have offten woundered what other way could our province help the matter. This is my idea: Actually it’s more of a question then any thing.:
There has to be some thing that the Pine Beetle can not stand. What ever this is , if it were injected into the pine tree the beetle would stop it’s destruction of the tree because what ever is in the nutriance that the pine beelte sucks out has been contaminated. What natural resorce could we use that wouldn’t kill the pine but kill the beate or give it a reason to no longer harm the pine?
What do pine beetles hate? What would they stay away from?
You might ask “how do you inject a pine with this so called nutriant contaminatore with out harming the tree?
Well it would be a long and very interesting process and very expensive but we eather find what the pine beetle hates, put into the tree and test to see if the pin beetle becomes resistant and gives up or find that one day we look out our window and B.C looks dead.
We need to find what teh pine beetle hates and put that in the tree with out killing it.