Gov. Bill Ritter peered out the window of a small turboprop plane Wednesday at huge swaths of red-needled, beetle-infested forest and hundreds of new homes encroaching deeper into the woods.
“What you see are just massive areas where the landscape of this state will change dramatically,” Ritter said after stepping off the plane at Centennial Airport. “The forest will be reshaped.”
The governor surveyed some of the 660,000 acres of trees killed by bark- burrowing beetles on a flyover from Evergreen to Breckenridge with state and federal forestry officials.
They’re concerned about how the acres of dead lodgepole pine will affect tourism and how they will battle raging fires fueled by dry needles and wood stacked on the forest floor – especially as more people build homes in the wilderness.
“This is spooky for firefighters,” said Rick Cables, regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service. “When you get into a forest that’s dead, the hair kind of stands up on the back of their necks.”
Colorado has had 460 wildfires so far this year. Last year, 4,700 fires burned 250,000 acres and caused $1.3 million in damage.
Owners of homes close to the woods, particularly in beetle-ravaged Granby, are frightened, Cables said. Private landowners share the responsibility of saving their homes in a wildfire and should remove fuel on their property and make sure roads are accessible, officials said.
Crews are working to remove some of the forest-floor kindling in areas close to communities and watersheds, but they cannot – and should not – clean up whole forests, said State Forester Jeff Jahnke.
The state is searching for ways to turn the dead wood into renewable energy, a staple of Ritter’s agenda. In Kremmling, a group of local business and property owners plans to chop thousands of dead trees into pellets for wood stoves.
The legislature passed a handful of laws this year targeting the beetle epidemic, including one that provides $1 million for pilot projects to clean up the forest and reduce fire hazards.
Ski resorts are keeping bark beetles at bay by spraying trees with a clear insecticide, which costs $15 to $20 per tree and is usually done every other year. During the flyover, officials were struck by the red trees surrounding the perimeter of Winter Park ski area.
“There will be a day when they will lose their red needles, and you will have stands of bare trees,” Ritter said.
But the forest rejuvenates itself, and in 10 or 20 years, acres of green saplings will replace the dead, red pines.
“Mother Nature is striking and bears and destroys different things over time,” Cables said. “I think people still will come to Colorado.”
Foresters said they are happy to have an outdoorsman and fly fisherman as governor and were impressed that Ritter knew the names of lakes and mountain ranges from the sky.
“That’s as good as it gets for us,” Cables said.
