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The situation
The mountain pine beetle epidemic has raced across the West, decimating forests from Canada to New Mexico, including an estimated 3.6 million acres in Colorado and Wyoming. In the Roaring Fork Valley, near Aspen, Colorado, many lodgepole pines are turning "red and dead," a clear sign of the epidemic's arrival at our doorstep. 
 
The nature of our forest
The upper Roaring Fork Valley is blessed with greater forest diversity than many areas of Colorado where the pine beetle seems to be killing every tree in sight. Our balance of spruce, fir, aspen and lodgepole pine endows our local forests with greater resistance to specific insects and diseases. Nonetheless, many forest areas around the Roaring Fork Valley - such as Smuggler Mountain and Hunter Creek, Lenado, the backside and top of Red Mountain, the long ridgeline from Smuggler to the Midway Pass/Lost Man area, Warren Lakes, Mt. Sopris, Reudi, and lower Woody Creek - all contain extensive lodgepole pine populations that are now severely endangered. As a community, we have a stewardship responsibility to sustain the wildland/urban interface - our community's "backyard" - as healthy green ecosystems rather than wide swaths of dead or burned trees... and to do so in a forward-thinking, adaptable, and scientifically sound manner.

The urgency
Unless we act swiftly, the beetle will decimate the trees around our recreation areas, homes and viewsheds, just as it's doing around Vail, Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge.

For two to three years after an epidemic infestation, forests killed by pine beetles may result in increased wildfire danger to nearby residents and will pose other threats to watershed quality and existing wildlife habitat. In addition, the visual blight of dead forests endangers the economic sustainability of communities that depend on their pristine mountains and clear streams for recreation and tourism. While dead forests will eventually re-grow, this process can take decades. There is threat at the wildland/urban interface through fire danger, watershed harm, serious aesthetic and economic loss.
 
Merritt, BC: A success story
Through aggressive and coordinated action, the city of Merritt, British Columbia has saved approximately 70 percent of its pines within the community and adjacent forests. Merritt's success is striking because British Columbia sits at the heart of the epidemic.
 
More than 50,000 square miles of forests have been killed off by the beetle in Western Canada. Yet Merritt has been able to save its pine trees through aggressive removal of infected trees, and stapling small pouches of verbenone, a common organic compound generated by beetles during their mating season, to healthy trees.
 
A group including For The Forest Executive Director and former Aspen mayor, John Bennett, recently visited Merritt to find out we can do to save the pines, great and small, that grow in Aspen and along its wildland-urban interface (WUI). While no "cure" exists for the mountain pine beetle across vast forest regions, we can work to protect trees in our backyard and the surrounding WUI.
 
There are many good reasons to take action to save our local pine populations. The most pressing is public safety, which is threatened by the wildfire hazards and falling trees that accompany dead forests. Others include ecological diversity, river health, wildlife habitat, scenic beauty and preserving our economy.
 
To learn more, download "The Merritt Experience," a concise account of how Merritt saved its forests.

Addressing the Threat in the "WUI"
No silver bullet exists to stop the pine beetle on a regional basis. For example, widespread use of insecticides is neither practical nor ecologically prudent over entire forests. The pine beetle may simply be impossible to stop in remote wilderness areas and across vast stretches of our national forests.

We can, however, seek to defend specific forests in the wildland/urban interface (or the "WUI") that surrounds our communities and recreation areas. Employing known principles of good forest stewardship, we can work together to mitigate the beetle's ability to ravage our community forests, degrade our watersheds and increase wildfire danger to our residents. The beetles, in turn, are symptomatic of larger forest health issues that affect our community forests, and FTF seeks a comprehensive approach to the entire spectrum of forest stewardship.

Here in the "WUI" - around which we live, work and play - we should work proactively to protect our community's "backyard."