Annual aerial survey work last year, although curtailed because of the pandemic, remained sufficient to show that the spruce beetle remains the most damaging forest pest in Colorado for the ninth straight year.
The U.S. Forest Service and Colorado State Forest Service last year were forced to prioritize where they did aerial surveys in order to follow COVID-19 safety protocols. That meant they monitored 16.3 million acres from the air, down from 30.2 million acres the year prior, thus preventing comparisons of survey results between 2020 and other years.
âDespite the modified flights, observers were able to detect and track pests infesting areas of forests that were previously unaffected, including the spruce beetle and Douglas-fir beetle. While the intensity of these two native bark beetles decreased in 2020, they continue to infest and kill previously unaffected stands,â the agencies said this week in a news release.
Colorado Public Radio
Products like biochar could provide the financial motivation for fire mitigation products, which reduce fuels but also creates massive piles of unwanted timber.
If there’s a piece of wood out there, James Gaspard will probably take it.
The 17 acres his company owns in Berthoud, Colo., is stacked with rejected trees from across the state. The beetle-kill branches and fire-scarred trunks wait to be fed into 100 massive kilns, which look like a fleet of rusty UFOs landing in the farmland below Longs Peak.
His company, Biochar Now, uses the contraptions to convert wood into biochar, a carbon-rich charcoal that can help soil retain water and nutrients.
Accused of setting the Spring Creek Fire, Jesper Joergensen will remain in custody, at least for now, after a judge refused to dismiss criminal charges against him Friday.
Joergensen, a Denmark native who was in the United States on an expired visa at the time of the Spring Creek Fire in 2018, is charged with 349 counts of arson.
The massive fire was the third largest in state history at the time it’s since been surpassed after three of the five largest wildfires in state history occurred in 2020 and smoky skies enveloped Pueblo for weeks.
More than 108,000 acres burned and at least 141 homes were destroyed.
For Steamboat Pilot & Today
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS It is winter in Colorado, and people are still talking about wildfire. The 2020 fire season was long and intense. The state’s three largest wildfires, Cameron Peak, East Troublesome and Pine Gulch, combined to burn over a half-million acres. Forest conditions, such as age and insect and diseases, combined with climactic changes like drought, extreme weather events, higher temperatures, decreased snowpack and early thaw, have dramatically increased the stress on our forests. The snowpack this winter is generally below average in Northwest Colorado so far, so no one could be blamed for being a little anxious about the upcoming fire season.
Local Nonprofit Launches Initiative to Protect Big Thompson Water Supplies
Local Nonprofit Launches Initiative to Protect Big Thompson Water Supplies
Big Thompson Canyon. Image courtesy of www.allestespark.com
Peaks to People Water Fund have launched its Big Thompson Initiative in Northern Colorado to proactively treat wildfire risk through accelerated forest restoration and stewardship in the watersheds.
The Big Thompson watershed’s water infrastructure supplies between 40 percent and 55 percent of Fort Collins, Loveland, and Greeley’s annual water needs, providing water to 30 additional towns and cities along the state’s front range. The state’s forests have become dense and overgrown after years of protection from wildfire, which has increased the risk of severe wildfires such as the Cameron Peak Fire that threaten water supplies with sedimentation and debris.