Beetles and SAD: Feds devising plan to avoid the worst of forest ailments

The forest will probably look really different here…

The spruce beetle outbreak that set the stage for the devastating West Fork Complex fire near South Fork in the summer of 2013 is making its way to Gunnison County. At the same time, more than 145,000 acres of aspen stands have died as a result of an unusual ailment, referred to simply as Sudden Aspen Decline (SAD). According to the U.S. Forest Service, all we can do is prepare.

Combined, insects and disease are affecting about 300,000 acres of the Grand Mesa Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests and the Forest Service’s research has shown that those impacts have “rapidly increased in recent years.” GMUG forest supervisor Scott Armentrout told the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners that their jurisdiction would become the front lines in a fight being dubbed the Spruce Beetle Epidemic and Aspen Decline Management Response (SBEADMR) project as the outbreaks make their way north from Hinsdale County. Armentrout told the commissioners that while the foresters couldn’t predict exactly what the spruce beetle would do, “There’s really nothing to stop them moving forward into Gunnison County except the wind,” referring to the way the insects transport themselves from food source to food source. The result, he said, could be as much as 90 percent mortality among the mature spruce and fir trees that dominate the Gunnison County evergreen population. Those trees take 200 to 400 years to grow, meaning the local landscape might look very different for generations, Armentrout said. “Managing the spruce beetle is a priority for the Forest Service right now,” Armentrout said. Aspen woes, too Alongside the spruce trees, aspen are dying off en masse and the foresters aren’t certain exactly why it’s happening. In a letter from the Forest Service to the public describing the SBEADMR project, Armentrout said, “Although stand-level episodes of aspen mortality have always occurred, occasionally clustered in time, the speed, pattern, severity, landscape scale and causes of the mortality in the middle of the last decade were so novel that it was described as a new disease, Sudden Aspen Decline (SAD).” He went on to say, “The recent hot and dry climatic pattern in conjunction with insects and disease have led to 1,215,000 acres of SAD in Colorado and 238,000 acres of SAD on the GMUG from 2000 to 2010. Expected future climatic conditions for this area include recurring drought and high summer temperatures which exacerbate SAD.” Between the anomalous beetles and Sudden Aspen Decline, foresters are trying to prepare people for what the next forest might look like. And although no one knows what the next decade will hold, Armentrout told the commissioners the forest of tomorrow would probably be something much different from what they see today. Part of that difference would be due to the effects bugs and disease will have on the forest; part will be due to the treatment being prescribed by the Forest Service. Instead of seeing millions of dollars in timber turned to waste by the advancing epidemics, the Forest Service is getting ahead of the epidemics with a plan to take what they can before it’s too late. Armentrout told the commissioners the logging activity on the GMUG was already at a 20-year high and he expects that to only continue or increase over the next five to 10 years, first with the trees closest to homes and roads and then with those with the most economic value, at a pace of more than 1,000 acres per year. Depending on the size and condition of the tree, it might hold its value for three to seven years after it’s been killed by beetles. Armentrout told the commissioners that unlike the pine beetle that ravaged the northern part of the state, spruce-beetle–killed trees don’t turn brown. Instead they might be dead for some time before suddenly dropping their needles and becoming fuel for a wildfire. A catastrophic wildfire is the one of main concerns with letting the epidemics go untreated. Armentrout told the commissioners the areas around South Fork that experienced extreme wildfire conditions last summer are ahead of the GMUG, but not too far ahead. “This will set the stage for a lot of years in how we deal with the spruce beetle epidemic,” Armentrout said. “Fire is going to play a role—prescribed burns and natural fire left alone in areas where it can burn. South Fork was ahead of us and now we’re trying to avoid a similar catastrophic fire here. We need to respond to this and we think this is the best tool.” A draft of the plan will be released in the coming months.