Dying forests.  A few weeks ago the local papers here in Wyoming published an article stating that, based on information from the Forest Service, 90% of the mature pine trees in the Medicine Bow / Routt National forest would be dead in 3 years due to beetle-kill.  
 The difference in our hunting areas from last year is almost unbelievable.  Huge vistas of mountainsides are rusty brown instead of the usual pine green. Once pristine deep-woods now look like hell.
 The deer and elk are still around but I have to wonder what the affect is going to be in the end.
 

 

It's not just there, it's all over.. I remember the beetle deal from years ago when I was a kid growing up.. Forest fires do have a purpose in mother natures scheme of things..

What a shame. I understand your grief. Here we have oak wilt and oak decline. Vast areas of live oaks that are hundreds of years old, dead.

Yep, best thing that could happen right now in some of these areas is a helacious fire.  The only problem will be gaining control of it, as it will almost certainly turn into a tree-top fire.  With all that dead wood, a massive fire is a certainty, sooner or later.

Bad news indeed...Medicine Bow blew my breath away...other than driving from Salt Lake to MPLS on the freeway that park's my only "out west" experience. Hopefully you're right and nature takes care of business without anyone getting hurt.

Best of luck chasing some game though.

Regards,
 Dave

I fish, hike, camp, and hunt the same mountains and yes it's horrible.  We have witnessed how fast this epidemic has spread.  It's ugly.

We need to get together, We might be hunting right down the road from each other.

Talking about beetles here in Ontario Canada we got hit hard by them and that dutch elm dease to it was hard enough to find elm or red elm now its even harder to find it

Same thing happened to us in the santiam national forest in the cascade range.  A few years back we had a devestating fire that really wiped out the area.  Now we have millions of board feet of lumber sitting there rotting, and the enviros wont allow any cutting.  What a waste of resources, both before and after the fire.  I hate to see our beautiful forests ruined because of a few wealthy and powerful treehuggers.  Sorry to inject politics in here, just had to rant.

I was in British Columbia in 2007, they have the same problem. 100's of square miles DEAD.. The big issue is the timber is still standing. What a disaster when it catches fire. The loggers (who are trying like hell to get it all logged) told me they could hear the beetles killing the trees. They sounded like rice crispys.

Nature will take care of nature.

Drove through the Shoshone near Dubois the other day, and the beetles have been raising havoc there, too. Togwotee Pass is rusty colored, as is everything between there and Dubois. A sad state of affairs, and a big forest fire waiting to happen. So far, the Bighorns aren't bad, but we will probably get our share, as well.

Those guys can do a number on a pine quick! Ive seen it in East Texas

Bowbender and stinkyshootin, I'm seein it too.  Its' bad all over, though the sierra Madres seem to have a year Jump on the snowies, both are bad.  OH well, it'll get cleaned up eventually, and the animals do a fine job of not noticing and adapting.

We've had the beetle here for the past ten years. It is devistating. Hopefully they will let loggers in. It hurrt the hunting for a few years, but in the last couple I've started seeing numbers and size like before. The animals learn to adapt, but it is real hard to look at.

I just returned from hunting all around that area.  Rout, Zirkel, seven utes and the areas near Walden.  Looks like my army camo from a couple of years ago.  Pine beetles everywhere.  People are cutting all the dead trees around there homes and businesses to prevent being burned out.  My father guided for Red Feather out there and couldn't believe how bad it was this time.

This kinda stinks. The beauty & scenery of the outdoors is a big part of why we hunt. I don't know if this was preventable. The University types say it is due to milder winters not killing off the beetles along with an extended drought which weakens the trees defenses.
    I suppose as the trees die off it will allow more ground vegetation for animals.

Pine  beetles are cyclic, and will die off naturally after they run their course. In fact, all nature is cyclic, and the natural world is always in a state of flux. This too will pass, and the animals will cope.

Its over here in southern California to

Well,  I hate to be the dark cloud here and I know that in time the situation will turn around. However, if 90% of mature pines actually do die, it will be a long, long time before we see the dark pine forest again.  A good portion of the nat'l forest is virgin, un-cut, near 100 year old trees.  By the time everything falls, is cleaned up, and new trees take hold, we're looking at 20-30 years to get anything more than something that looks like a clear-cut.  It'll be 60-80 years before we really have back what is lost.