In the News...

Hearing looks at removing dead trees from forest

Thursday, April 22 2010

Coloradoan.com
BY Bobby Magill
April 22, 2010

Watch your head when you're hiking through Northern Colorado's bark- beetle ravaged national forests.

About 100,000 bark beetle-killed trees could fall per day from now on as the dead lodgepole pines begin to weaken and become vulnerable to the blowing wind.

That was the word Wednesday from the U.S. Forest Service, said Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., following a Senate hearing on his bark beetle bill moving its way through Congress.

The bill would provide money to the Forest Service and area communities to remove dead trees that threaten to fall on homes, businesses, roads and power lines, or otherwise threaten the health and safety of the public.

Summit and Grand counties have long been at the copper-hued heart of the bark beetle outbreak, but Larimer County saw the most impact from the spreading bark beetle in 2009. So far, about 3.5 million acres in the Arapaho-Roosevelt and two other national forests in northern and central Colorado have been ravaged by the bark beetle.

"When those trees start coming down, I think people will think twice about going to those places to recreate," said state Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Breckenridge, after he testified at the Senate hearing about the bark beetle's devastation in Summit County.

State Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, who was also at the Senate hearing, said Udall’s bill will give the biomass fuel industry incentives to harvest beetle-killed trees.

Up to $100 million will be needed annually for the federal government to remove hazard trees, she said.

Udall said his bill will not harm roadless areas in Northern Colorado’s national forests, which are at the center of a controversy about which rule should govern them — a federal rule protecting roadless areas nationwide all in the same way or one written specifically for Colorado’s forests.

He said his bill will focus on removing trees only in areas where human infrastructure would be threatened.

“The bill complies and works within the roadless rule,” Udall said.