Plagues killing Utah's forests

Utah's forests are in trouble.

Drought, fire and a bark beetle infestation are endangering and killing the state's trees by the millions.

A new report on "Forest Health in Utah," put out by the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, shows:

• Only 10 percent of Utah's land base comprises forest. Within that area, 90 percent of Utah's forested landscape is currently considered to have moderate to high risk for catastrophic wildfires and about 2.2 million acres of forests are rated moderate to highly susceptible to bark-beetle attack.

• 49 percent, roughly 225,000 acres, of spruce trees are impacted by the bark beetle; 59 percent, roughly 438,000 acres, of subalpine fir trees are impacted; 34 percent, around 136,000 acres, of white fir are infected; 15 percent, about 165,000 acres, of the pine trees in the state carry the beetle; and 3 percent of the Douglas fir and 1 percent of the pinyon pines are infected. In Juab County, in the past year, the number of pinyons hit has jumped to 25 percent.

"These are problems that are being greatly exacerbated by the drought," said forester Joel Frandsen, director of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

The bark beetle is only one of several concerns. Past logging practices, grazing, fire suppression, old trees and forest density are all on the list of contributors to poor forest health.

Since 1999, Utah has lost an estimated 1.7 million trees to beetle attacks. In fact, the bark beetle kills more trees annually than fire.

Beetle attacks are a routine occurrence in the forest. In the past, nature has stepped in and, over time, solved the problem. Today's forests have been so altered by fire suppression, grazing and harvesting practices that nature's work has been impaired.

Wayne Hoskisson, with Red Rock Forests, an environmental group out of Moab, agrees there is a beetle problem.

"But the first thing we need to do is ask why we have a beetle epidemic. Beetles are as much a part of the forest as trees, and there's no way of removing them. What we need to do is see where the beetle fits into the cycle, what we've done to alter the cycles and then do something," he offered. "Cutting down trees is not the solution."

In the case of fires, nature's cleansing system, the national policy is to extinguish them as soon as possible instead of allowing burns to run their course.