Joe:

Agree almost completely, but add one bit of color.  We've been traipsing around the west in recent weeks, noting that wildfires have created a huge volume of wood that the forest service is burning in situ due to a lack of budget and lack of demand for anything outside the forest.  It's a bit crazy - here we have high priced power markets, huge demand for renewables and the best use we can find for the biomass on the ground is to light it on fire and piss the heat away.

Anyway, to the matter at hand, one of the things we've learned from the folks out there is that while global warming is certainly a contributor to the beetle infestation, forestry management may be as or more important.  We stood on tracts of land that had 9 trees to the acre in 1900 that today have over 2000 trees to the acre.  Early foresters cut all the big stuff down and what's come back up has come up as a "green wall".  This is serving to pull water out of the ground much faster, such that there is wood standing in the SW forests with 35% moisture, unable to get any more access to water.  (For comparison, NE forests are 50 - 60% moisture.)  As the NYT article notes, one of the tree's defenses against the beetle is to spew sap, but it can't spew sap if it doesn't have water.  And the beetles have free reign as a result.

This is not to diminish the global warming story, only to note that there are other environmental issues at work here too which are significant and potentially so even if we could magically address global warming tomorrow.  The sad thing I found going out there is that the conversation about forestry management pits snowmobilers/loggers at one extreme and John Muir/Smokey Bear on the other.  The former would cut everything down while the latter would maintain a no-management policy that raises fire risk and beetle blight.  And the solution lies not between these two perspectives, but orthogonal to that axis of debate.  Sad.

Backcut may want to get out of the Forest Circus; can't blame him, really.  The Forest Service has back-peddled on so many environmental protections that the forests may be safer in the jaws of the pine beetles.  But, really quiting?

What's that logic in that?  Real change comes from within.  The private sector can have only so much influence on the government agencies.  Especially when gov't agencies write rules that allow themselves to ignore the public.  It may be legal and "by the regs", but is it right?

The decision to do what is right or wrong, in many cases, depends on the individual employee.  That is where personal integrity and impassioned devotion to protecting our natural resources comes into play.  These decisions can only be made from inside the agency.  The Forest Service is insulated from most of the influence from the private sector.  

Getting out of the government service means that one will be added to the disgruntled, former government employee list.  No one on the inside takes these people seriously.  They are written off as whining losers who have a personal beef with the agency.  Like it or not, it's a fact.

So, anyone that is thinking of getting out has a tough choice: either sit on the bank and bitch OR get in the boat and start fishing.  You can figure out for yourselves which is more effective.  

Most times for evil to win it doesn't take a large, horrible event; it just takes a lot of people each doing just a little bad. AOOOOOOooooooooo.........

A serious side issue to the loss of the pine trees is the subsequent loss of the pine nut harvest---which is an important and sizeable element in the grizzly bears' fall diet.  The loss of trees in Yellowstone is accompanied by the loss of rainbow trout to the bears because of lake trout introduced purposely or accidentally (by the release of bait minnows) into Yellowstone Lake.  The remaining numbers of rainbow trout are increasingly infected with "twirling disease" and don't live to maturity.

Hey Backcut,

Some of us here are neophytes about "the ignored science" of forestry.  I mean, I know what erosion is, and riparian areas, and the bark beetle, but I think some of us could use a primer.  Sort of a "Forestry for Dummies".  

 I spend too much of my environmental reading time involving things like plug-in hybrids, and almost none about forestry.

Can you help me out or point me to a source of basics of the current situation in the North American West?

Thanks.

I, as well as many others (I am sure) would love a primer.  General overview.  30 pages or less.  Even an extended article by Grist that sat on the front page would do.

"Last century" forestry practices made sense when they were first begun.  Stop fires so that they don't burn valuable timber, reforest with valuable species and get rid of "trash" trees.

We tried that route and discovered the consequences.  Now we have to design a better, wiser approach.

For the last eight years we have "enjoyed" a government that took a 'profits first, ignore science' route.  Those years are over in less than two months.  

I'm looking for forest practices to improve....

Thank you Backcut.  I will read it.

I wasn't aware that there were "camps" in the environmental movement about how to handle forests.  That is how little I know about this topic.

If anyone else has a position paper (at the basic level) that is environmentally concerned, but contradicts what I am about to read above, let me know.

-Christopher S. Johnson

The catastrophic global warming that carbon haters want so badly isn't happening. Global mean temperatures rose by about 0.7 degrees Celsius during the 20th century with cooling and warming periods along the way. Since 1998 there has been no warming, and since 2002 we've had a global cooling trend. So manmade global warming isn't the cause of bark beetle outbreaks, because manmade global warming doesn't exist. Drought, disease, and high tree density are the main causes of outbreaks, and since there is no global warming, the droughts were natural, however, high tree density may be due to man's forestry practices.

Which is it?  That warming of any kind isn't happening and contributing to the Western drought?  Or than anthropogenic warming doesn't exist?  Pick your argument more carefully.

Why would you need to specifically disprove man contributed global warming if you can prove there isn't ANY warming occurring at all?  Is that some kind of "shotgun" approach?  To see what sticks?  That's excellent science.

By the way.  2002 called. They want their troll back.

Yes, and also let's not have any more talk from biologists about evolutionary effects because the Earth was snapped into being over a week's time six thousand and twenty or so years ago. Also, females of all species are inferior, especially humans, and need not be taken seriously. And some of you have your astronomy incorrect as well, as you seem to have the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. Actually the Earth is the center of the universe, which consists of the sun and moon and a few planets--those stars are not flaming balls of gas like the sun, but angels.
Hope that clears everything up.