The Intermountain West's forest Bark health problem has made it on to the agenda of farmers and ranchers, to judge from the reaction to a U.S. House Committee on Agriculture field hearing, in Laramie County, Wyoming, on May 4.  An audience of largely farmers and ranchers learned, from a Forest Service witness, that "100,000 trees a day are falling, and that will continue every day for the next ten years," because of the bark beetle infestation, with long-term implications for the region in terms of the snow-melt schedules in watersheds that farmers and ranchers depend on for crop irrigation and maintenance of pastureland.

Although Ag Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) criticized "extreme environmentalists" for stymieing programs to restore the region's forests to health, he asserted that his Committee did not have the jurisdiction to reform the enabling legislation.  The only practical measure that the Committee seemed able to entertain was a proposal from the Colorado Association of Wheat Growers to craft some sort of "safety net" that recognized the changing realities in which farmers operate, in terms of both weather and markets.