Beetle Epidemic Caused by Misguided Dogma of Extremists
by Fred Hodgeboom, Guest Commentary, Clark Fork Chronicle, July 09 2009 [here]
The recent New York Times article (”A House in the Woods When the Woods are Gone,” [here]) is the latest example of the urban myth misinformation that the mainstream media routinely provides to the masses by blaming everything undesirable on “climate change.”
The article ignored the natural role of forest and insect ecology regarding the hundreds of thousands of acres of even-aged (80-100+ year old, near mono-cultures of lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir on federal land surrounding the private property near Helena featured in the article. In the western United States, the period of 1880-1930 was one of huge forest fires, illustrated by the well known 1910 holocaust that burned nearly 3 million continuous acres in Idaho and Montana in two days. The new forests that re-grew from these burns have now matured into optimal feeding and breeding habitat for bark beetles and spruce budworm, especially on federal lands where management of the 100-year-old burn areas has been scant. The insect outbreaks and resulting fire hazard on federal lands has been predicted by forest and fire scientists for decades and are nothing new.
Insect epidemics will always occur when you have vast areas of ideal habitat for the bugs that allow their populations to escape all natural checks. A cold winter or two, or even pesticide spraying, only delays the inevitable bug population explosion until favorable conditions occur. Dry years inevitably occur as they have historically. As long as the perfect habitat exists over vast areas, the bugs will eventually outbreak into an epidemic and reduce their habitat by killing the trees if humans don’t alter the insect habitat first. There is simply no way to “protect” huge areas of prime bug habitat for long.
We (the public, the Congress, and federal land managers) failed miserably in the last two decades to actively create age and tree species diversity in the vast even-aged stands dominated by lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir that resulted from the huge fires of 1880-1930 period, especially in the western federal forests. We are now experiencing the insect epidemics and the re-occurrence of the huge turn of the 19th century fires as forests are pre-disposed to catastrophic fires by unbroken expanses of bug-killed trees. These fires commonly have energy releases equivalent to an atomic bomb exploding every 5-10 minutes. No amount of firefighting expenditure will control the fire until it runs out of the heavy fuels or the weather changes. After the forest is killed, the commercial value of the wood is rapidly lost, and if there is no market for cracked and worm riddled dead wood, the area is doomed to a catastrophic fire at some future time.
We are all now paying the price for the misguided dogma of so called “conservation groups” very successful campaign to “preserve and protect” the federal forests by prohibiting roads and timber harvests over the past several decades. The preservation lobby industry has been so successful that the states of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico essentially have no timber infrastructure left and no markets for excess wood, live or dead. Montana is not too far behind with only one pulp mill and a few sawmills left, struggling to survive primarily on limited raw material from state and private land.
Now that the dead and/or burned forests cover so many of Montana’s mountains, the real consequences of the preservation urban myth dogma is exposed to the public. Many “conservation” lobbyists and government officials are rushing to blame the adverse effects and costs of the failed preservation efforts on another urban myth-”climate change.”
Fred Hodgeboom is a retired USFS forester and currently President of Montanans For Multiple Use [here]
by Bob Z.
by bear bait
The “public” is getting what it wants, what it deserves. That what they want and will get does have a downside is ignored by purposefully ignorant media and results directed science.
A doctor cannot go out and beat the living shit out of someone so that he might have a person on which he can practice his healing arts and science. But land managers can do that either by commission of non-sustainable logging practices, or by not allowing any fiber removal for any reason. A doctor will be held liable and a land manager will retire with a pension. The person and the forest suffer because they are the dedicated victims.
The urban majority is an ass. Our present government is an ass. So to expect much more than braying from an ass is to expect too much. We had better get used to the braying or take the chance of getting beat up a lot in attempts to change the way things are headed.
You cannot make me drive an electric rollerskate to save the atmosphere from greenhouse gases, and burn public lands by the millions of acres “for resource benefit” at the same time, because that is insane and I won’t stand for insane government. Nor will many others. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, then you have a picture of the present Federal land management path. The very existence of a Forest Service, to serve and protect forests from fire that was consuming those lands in great chunks annually, came about due to fire and exploitation.
When you take over management of land that has been managed for millennia, you had better have a better plan than to do nothing. Allowing fire to have its head in the heat of summer is not a plan. That is insanity. To not start fires in dry surface fuels on wet ground in the spring or late fall is part of the insanity, because that is the anthropogenic fire the forests need and developed with over the ages. Until the majority, the urban majority, recognized how we got here from there, all is lost. And if the last decade of fire has not shown you that all is lost, you don’t pay attention and will never pay attention.
Congratulations to Fred Hodgeboom for a knowledgeable and clearly presented analysis of the current crisis in western forests managed by the USFS.
This result was clearly predicted, as he points out, and readily preventable — as he also states. There is no real excuse for this avoidable mess, other than the examples he gives.
If the government paid nearly as much attention to the potential for turning dead trees and forest thinnings into energy as it does to Global Warming fears, we would be taking important and measurable steps toward resolving both problems.
Many of us do not believe that the “consensus science” supporting Global Warming hysteria has any lasting value, but I think everyone knows that much of our current economic problems can be traced to local and national dependencies on foreign energy sources.
I only wish that all of the believers in apocalyptic computer modeling were also as fervent in their beliefs that healthy forests, rural employment, wildlife habitat enhancement, recreational enjoyment, landscape aesthetics — and Global Warming fears — can all be addressed simultaneously. A return to active management of our federal forests can have those beneficial results.