At the risk of being called “Captain Obvious,” I want to draw attention to the comeback being staged by the Mountain Pine Beetle in our “Evergreen” forests. I say comeback because there was a major infestation in the late 1990s. That’s when Summit County was hit so hard—witness the mountainside of dead trees on the west side of the Eisenhower tunnel. You may look around Evergreen and say, “Oh, there’s just a few clumps of dead trees here and there. And it’s nature’s way of forest management.” Well, that is true. But a beetle infestation can morph into a full-blown epidemic that completely kills a mountainside of beautiful pine trees in a few years.
There is a plethora of Mountain Pine Beetle information online and several local companies with trained arborists to help you maintain your trees.
So, educate yourself and don’t let your new home nestled among the pines become a home sitting in a meadow.
