90% Of Colorado Pines Will Die

Bark beetles are leaving in their path huge swaths of dead trees -- and their voracious appetites will leave as much as 90% of the pines in Colorado and parts of Wyoming dead within five years, experts now say.

Unlike other high-profile beetle infestations, this one is a native bug. But its sudden resurgence has everything to do with the hot and dry conditions that have made its emergence possible. Warm and dry conditions, of course, are one consequence predicted by global warming models.

And hot and dry conditions contribute to fire risk -- along with trees dried out by the sap-sucking beetles. For all that, the beetles themselves are a longtime resident of the Rockies, and their cyclical emergence is nothing new to the forests, even if it is new to the human occupants who haven't witnessed this kind of devastation in several generations.

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