Warmer Climate Makes Life Easier For Nasty Pine Beetle

pine beetle As our climate continues its warming trend, there continues to be hard-felt consequences on our environment and industries.

One such consequence is the growing problem presented by the mountain pine beetle. In decades prior, cold winters would kill off this seasonal pest and ensure that each new Spring season would mean a fresh start for this forest-eating menace. However, as the winters have warmed, the pine beetle's population has exploded, as the winter is no longer the death sentence it used to be for this devastating beetle.

The result of a year-long pine beetle season has translated into millions of lost trees, and the environmental and economic damage continues to intensify.

State and federal lawmakers returning to work next month will face urgent requests for help dealing with a tiny bug that has chewed an enormous swath of destruction across the West.

The mountain pine beetle has killed tens of millions of trees in Colorado alone and has destroyed forests from New Mexico to Canada. Across the Rocky Mountain West, iconic postcard vistas are vanishing as entire mountainsides turn first a sickly shade of rust, then a ghostly gray.

Female beetles, about the size of a fingertip, bore into a tree and deposit their eggs in the layer of tissue under the bark. When the larvae hatch, they begin eating the tree from the inside, cutting off the flow of nutrients to branches and needles. It is impossible to get ahead of the beetle; all scientists can do is let the infestation run its course.

The beetle is expected to kill virtually every mature lodgepole pine in Colorado, or five million of the state's 22 million forested acres.

To learn more about the pine beetle and how it is adversely effecting Canadian forests, especially in British Columbia, watch this video:

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Warmer Climate Makes Life Easier For Nasty Pine Beetle

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