Thursday, 03 June 2010 13:58

Hikers and bikers will have to deal with more wind-blown trees than usual blocking trails in the mountains around Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale this spring, a forest ranger said Wednesday. “It's been a windy year. I think [forest] visitors are going to encounter more blowdown,” said Martha Moran, a recreation manager and planner with the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District. “Some trails are not going to get cleared like they have been in recent years.”

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Friday, 07 May 2010 13:06

What happens if the Poudre River watershed, which Fort Collins relies on for part of its drinking water supply, is scorched by a catastrophic wildfire fed by dead trees killed by bark beetles?

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Saturday, 03 April 2010 14:15

Rio Grande National Forest officials have signed off on a project that would salvage up to 878 acres of beetle-infested spruce trees in southern Conejos County. The project calls for harvesting between 8 million and 13.1 million board feet from a part of the forest that sits along the Rio de los Pinos, roughly two miles northwest of Cumbres Pass. Aerial surveys conducted last year found the spruce beetle has spread to roughly 144,000 acres of the 1.9 million acre national forest, but officials are not counting on the project to halt the infestation. 

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Thursday, 25 March 2010 14:41

One of the potential silver linings in the dark cloud of the ongoing mountain pine bark beetle epidemic – which has ravaged more then 2 million acres of lodgepole pine trees in Colorado and Wyoming – is the possibility of alternative energy in the form of biomass. Even as Sen. Mark Udall blasts Republicans for blocking key hearings on his bill to free up funds for national forest thinning to reduce wildfire risk, he has supported other uses for all that dead wood –including proposed biomass power plants in places like Vail.

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