The Water Information Program

A pine beetle infestation is spreading from the mountains into southern Wyoming and the Front Range, and all of Colorado's mature lodgepole pine forests will be killed within three to five years, state and federal officials said Monday. The bark beetle infestation ravaged 500,000 new acres of forests in Colorado in 2007, bringing the total infestation to 1.5 million acres — almost all of state's lodgepole forests — according to the latest aerial survey. The infestation has now worked its way north and east, including an increase of more than 1,500 percent in the acreage affected in Boulder and Larimer counties. "That's a pretty staggering thought," Susan Gray, group leader of Forest Health Management for the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Region, said of the statewide figures that the official news release called a "catastrophic event." "That is going to have an effect on wildlife habitat, watersheds and everything that is dependent on lodgepole pine forests."  The reason for the infestation, according to Jeff Jahnke, Colorado state forester, is an "unprecedented combination of drought, warm winters . . . and poor conditions that have caused an extensive, unprecedented infestation of the beetle."

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