Sacramentos suffer from bark beetles

Bark beetles have "drastically affected" pine trees on approximately 65,000 forested acres around the Sacramento Mountains. Property owners and others around the region were told of the bark beetle outbreak that ramped up last year and were provided with ways to deal with the infestation during an informational meeting Tuesday afternoon. "What's happening is natural but out of proportion," Andrew Graves, a entomologist with the USDA Forest Service's regional Forest Health section, told the audience of nearly 100 people. "We're seeing dead trees. Mostly where we're seeing the dead trees is on the tops of the hillsides and on the south-facing slopes, the really drought prone areas. It makes me think it's really linked into the drought." Entomologists annually fly the state looking for tree mortality. The current conditions around the Sacramento Mountains are without boundaries, involving federal, state, tribal and private areas. Stressed trees have become a favorite for bark beetles. Graves said there are a dozen or so different bark beetles in the area that have attacked Ponderosa pines...more