Colorado will get a $30 million chunk of federal money to make 3 million acres of beetle-killed forest safer.
In December, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said $40 million would be spent to clear dead and weakened trees from Rocky Mountain forests but did not say how the money would be divided.
“It’s a huge win for our state in particular,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, who announced Monday that 75 percent of the money is coming to Colorado.
He called the pine beetle epidemic one of the region’s largest natural disasters.
Trees killed or weakened by pine beetles have become threats because they are likely to fall without warning and can create more dangerous conditions during wildfire seasons.
U.S. Forest Service officials say the money will focus on the three most affected forests, the Medicine Bow and Routt, Arapaho-Roosevelt, and White River national forests. About $2 million will be spent in forests damaged by spruce beetles in southern and western Colorado.
The National Incident Management Organization has been working with the Forest Service to develop a plan for the forest cleanup.
The Forest Service has used money from its own budget to do remediation work on 25,000 acres in each of the past two years.
The new grant will allow the agency to double the number of acres this year.
The Forest Service also will spend $8 million in Wyoming and $2 million in South Dakota to clean up pine beetle-killed trees.
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1638 or yrobles@denverpost.com
