Wilderness Experts to Congress: Pine Beetle Bad, but Not 'Armageddon'

Congress is set to take a look at the pine beetle outbreak during a hearing this week, and Colorado conservationists will be there to testify. They've been joining with local governments to get across a message: The beetle outbreak is a serious problem, but not the ecological Armageddon sometimes portrayed in the media. Dr. Greg Aplet with The Wilderness Society office in Denver is a forest ecologist who has been studying forests in Colorado for a number of years. He says an important scientific consensus has emerged on the relationship between lodgepole pine forests and these beetles. "The scale and intensity of the outbreak is unlike any outbreak that we've observed before, but that does not mean the end of lodgepole pine in the Rockies." Sloan Shoemaker is executive director of the Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale. He will testify at the hearing that a changing climate means it's time to stop trying to adapt the ecosystem to human-built communities...PublicNewsService