A little bit about burns, beetles, and forest death

In light of recent wildfires in the Cascade range that hit very close to home off of Blewett Pass, it seems to be the right time to post about bark beetles. The Leavenworth-Blewett area in North-central Washington, where Trakka is located, depended on logging and faux-Bavarian tourism for its livelihood. That is, before the Longview Fibre mill in Winston shut down in 2006. Before the faux-Bavarian village sprung up, timber was king. Locals resisted against lawsuits, appeals, or lobbying that sought to limit timber harvests. Clear cuts, in which all the trees are chopped down save a few so-called wildlife trees, were the most common, leaving left areas void of important, thin soils and living root mass. Bare hillsides became the norm for years, and in the place of the old-growth stands there grew even denser, even-aged forests. Before fire suppression began in the early 20th century, the Leavenworth area burned regularly, with most lands facing fire every dozen or so years. These ground-burning fires controlled excessive undergrowth, enabled large, fire-resistant trees to survive, and killed off most seedlings, all of which led to diverse-aged forests. But when fire suppression began, these small seedlings grew, and dense, even-aged forests became the norm. When fire struck these stands, where trees exhibited vertical and horizontal closeness, stand replacement fires- where the fire reached into the crowns of trees- burned at high temperatures and destroyed the forests, creating room for new, even less diverse ages of trees. Today, according to the Chelan County Conservation District, 98% of Leavenworth-area forests are recognized as Class II or III stands based on US Forest Service standards, meaning that the forests are not functioning and are prone to disease and infestation after 70 or more years without fire. With the decline in logging in the Leavenworth area, few natural or human population controls restrict the forests, and those that do are risky, insect-based infestations. After wildfires in 1994 swept the Icicle and Peshastin drainages, which encompass most of the greater Leavenworth area, and destroyed the biological and structural mainstay of the land, there was valid concern against logging due to the forest and soil health. The large and intense fires extended well into the crowns of trees and destroyed forests of Ponderosa pines known for their resilience and symbiotic relationship with fire. With watershed and soil health degraded following the fires, my grandparents worked towards new challenges against timber harvests, appealing and delaying sales on surrounding lands and enjoining timber sales on Tip Top. Around the same time, in the late 1980s through 1990s, the spotted owls’ preservation, using the newly-enacted Endangered Species Act, was successful in limiting timber sales. Forest management in the Leavenworth area was changed for good, and a number of suits and management plans pitted loggers and timber companies against conservationists and the general public. Little did conservationists and loggers know, however, that the very trees being saved for the owls would be dying as well due to pine bark beetles. The culprit in new forest deaths: a small, black creature, the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. A string of dry and fire-free summers combined with warmer winters to produce weakened trees and surviving beetle larvae. Only then did the small, black bodies appear across the property, complete with hundreds of dimples across their backs and a pair of powerful jaws. Each beetle was less than a quarter inch, but caused damage that extended a few feet around the trunk of each tree. After peeling away the bark, maps resembling flatland streams or coastal fjords appeared; the interconnected, weaving strands of destruction were filled with sawdust. Small pupa, segmented jelly-like transparent bugs, grew slowly early in the season before turning into full beetles capable of flying and creating their own homes one July or August. The parts of the land covered by meadows and trees spaced every few dozen to few hundred feet- the way the meadows and forests were before climate change and white settlement- remained healthy. But the dense forests, which hadn’t burned for decades and hadn’t been logged in almost as long, were dying due to the beetle. Trees once valued greatly for their timber were turned into dead trees, changing color to red and then grey as all foliage fell off.