Brief by Central Staff
Forests – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Piñon trees have always seemed quite durable — they can live to be 200 — but they’re suffering from the drought, too.
The piñon problem is an indirect result of dry weather. When there’s not enough water, the trees cut down on their sap production — and that’s their major defense against a tiny beetle known to science as Ips confusus. It’s about the size of a grain of rice.
When this insect, which is native to Colorado, bores into a healthy piñon, the tree secretes sap that smothers the beetle. Thus only weak trees normally become home to beetles.
Once they’ve penetrated, the beetles live beneath the bark, where they eat and mate to produce more beetles which tunnel out and fly to attack other trees.
The result, in southwestern Colorado and northern New Mexico, is an expanse of piñon with brown needles — dying and dead trees that present a significant fire hazard, according to land managers. Cutting the dead trees down might reduce the fuel load, but since the beetles are drawn to the odor of freshly cut piñon, it could also bring in more beetles to attack the survivors.
The piñon-juniper forest — like what you see around Buena Vista — is the most common type of forest in Colorado; of the 21.4 million acres of forest in the state, about 20 percent is piñon-juniper.
To date, the infestation has been to the south, but the Salida Ranger District said that the beetles have started killing trees in the Cotopaxi area, and that doesn’t bode well for other piñon-juniper forests in the area.
Once a tree is infected, there’s no way to save it, according to Kathryn Hardgrave at the Colorado State Forest Service office in Salida. “If you have infected trees on your property, the best way to stop the beetles is to cut those trees down, and either burn the wood right away, or cover the wood in plastic.”
There is an insecticide, carbaryl, which can protect healthy trees from the beetles, she said, and it is available at many nurseries. The Salida office of the State Forest Service (719-539-2579) has information for landowners, and if you get this magazine in time, you might want to attend an Ips beetle workshop from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Chaffee County Fairgrounds on March 21.