Pine Beetle Mania
After ravaging the West, the bugs are now heading east across Canada.
"For all the destruction wrought by pine beetles, they may be simply messengers. Around Bandelier National Monument these days the dead trees are falling pretty much every day. Cautionary road signs show one falling on a person. In much of the area, [USGS forest ecologist Craig] Allen says, the trees won’t regrow; grasses and shrubs are replacing them. Driving back down into Los Alamos, he tries to conjure some optimism. Elk love the new open meadows, he points out. 'People always say things like, A thousand acres were lost,' he says. 'But they weren’t actually lost. The land is still there, full of new life again.'"
—From “The Bug That’s Eating the Woods,” Hillary Rosner’s National Geographic piece about the eastern spread of pine beetles.
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