Washington State Foresters Expect Loss Of 3 Million Acres In Massive Forest Dieoffs In Next 15 Years

So many pine, fir and spruce trees in the Northwest are riddled with bugs and disease that major tree die-offs are expected to rip through a third of Eastern Washington forests — an area covering nearly 3 million acres — in the next 15 years, according to new state projections.

Because Washington's forests are deteriorating so quickly, the state commissioner of public lands last week said he'll appoint an emergency panel of scientists and foresters to seek ways to stabilize or reverse the decline.

The problem, as The Seattle Times reported earlier this month, is largely centered on tree-killing scourges such as the mountain pine beetle, which is spreading rapidly and getting into ever higher-elevation trees such as the troubled whitebark pine.

The number of acres of trees damaged in the past decade by diseases such as blister rust and invasions of western spruce budworm and bark beetles is more than twice what it was in the 1990s — and three times greater than in the 1980s. That dramatic increase has state officials eager to avoid becoming the next Colorado or British Columbia, both of which have seen millions of acres of forest wiped out in recent years by insects.

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016814224_deadforest21m.html

can see where that balance is and modify their activities for sustainability.

We already lost our home to a forest fire in 1994.

I noticed driving through the mtns. for Thanksgiving that the brown (new) growth is now gone, leaving "green" trees, after a horribly ugly summer of brown forests as far as the eye could see, at certain elevations, among the white pine stands, especially.

Feels like the pit and the pendulum.