Jim Robbins, a Helena, Montana freelance writer, wrote a thoughtful essay for the March 16, 2010 Yale Environment 360 in which he lamented the massive die-off in forests, not just here in the western United States but around the world. He poses a timely question: What's killing our forests?

I wouldn't know Jim Robbins if he walked past me, but I know the Helena area and I know that one of the massive die-offs of which he writes is closing in of the town itself and can be seen by anyone with eyes in their head.

Virtually all of the dead and dying trees stand in the Helena National Forests and, to the south, the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest. Unfortunately, almost nothing if being done to stem the spread of mountain pine beetles that are chewing their way through hundreds of square miles on once green forests.

The U.S. Forest Service talks a good story when it comes to die-offs and what needs to be done about them, but everyone knows their hands are tied by federal judges who long ago donned forester hats and think they know what's best for the forest, if not the country at large. They are aided in their lofty pursuits by environmental litigants for whom the battle for control of the nation's forest policy apparatus has become blood sport. But, I digress.

Back in the old days - say 10 years ago - the Intermountain West's pine beetles flew for two or three weeks every July, just as they had for eons. But according to Robbins, and University of Montana entomologist Diana Six, who Robbins interviewed for his essay, the annual flight to new trees starts in May and can run through October. If you're entomologist, it's a good time to be alive, but if you're lodgepole pine tree, it's not.

Lodgepole is not a long-lived conifer compared to, say, Douglas-fir, which in the right environment can live 600 to 700 years. By contrast, an 80-year-old lodgepole is old and a 100-year-old lodgepole is just plain ancient. Most of the lodgepole in western Montana is in the 80 to 100-year range, so it isn't surprising that it's dying. But the rate and spread of the die-off is unusual, some might say alarming. Robbins reports that some 70,000 square miles of standing dead lodgepole can be found in the Interior West, which includes a stunning 53,000 square mile die-off in Interior British Columbia.

Not surprisingly, quite a few scientists, including renowned University of Montana ecologist, Steve Running, believe the die-off is somehow connected to climate change. Maybe it is, but I part company with fervent environmentalists who believe this is all solely man-caused - and therefore yet another reason to shut down the American economy to "save" trees.

Somewhere in my files is a fascinating University of Arizona report titled "Tree Ring Research," that was done a decade or more ago by a group of UA scientists who built a climate model in reverse using tree ring data and soil samples gathered across the Southwest. Tree ring data is useful because the width of rings reveals much about the climate. Wider rings signal a wetter, warmer climate, while tighter rings - those with little space between them - signal a dryer, colder climate. Working their way backward some 2,000 years, the team concluded that warming and cooling periods in the Southwest can last from 150 to nearly 400 years. So the fact that the climate throughout the West is warmer now that most folks remember it being may well indicate that we are entering a warming cycle, though I hasten to add that some climatologists believe that the earth may in fact be entering a prolonged cooling period.

What I find more disturbing than these warming and cooling periods about which we can do nothing is the politicization of "climate change" Let's remember that as recently as three years ago, we didn't call it "climate change." We called it "global warming." Then I guess someone figured out that you could ring the extortion cash register twice as often if you instead called it "climate change." Now you can beat up on the industrialized world no matter what the weather is doing,  

What bothered me about Robbins' well written and fact-filled essay is that it didn't offer any solutions to what is ailing our diseased and dying forests. Are we supposed to stand by and do nothing while the West's great forests die and eventually burn to the ground? Many environmentalists say yes, but I say no.

At the very least, some greater effort needs to be made the reduce forest density in forests that are still green. Mechanized harvesting systems can do this work quickly, efficiently and safely. Where such systems have been used the results are visually pleasing and the risk of disease and wildfire substantially reduced. There are hundreds of examples of this all over the western United States, some quite easily seen from passing highways.

Will thinning work everywhere? No, it won't. Much of the West is too mountainous for mechanized harvesting, and a fair amount of the mortality we are seeing is in areas where timber harvesting of any kind for any reason is illegal. But where there is access and the terrain permits, we need to get serious about reducing forest density - a vitally important first step in reducing physiological stresses on trees that can't get the moisture, sunlight or soil nutrients to survive and grow. Beetles can detect stress. That's how the pick the trees they pick.

Most of the timber that needs to be removed from overstocked forests isn't much good. Some is, but much more isn't suitable for milling. But it can - and is - being used as an energy source. But the direct costs associated with gathering, transporting, processing and burning forest biomass often exceeds the costs associated with burning coal or natural gas. Fine, but I'd like to see some cost numbers that include the three or four billion a year that taxpayers shell out annually to put out forest fires. And I'd like to see some effort made to account for the cost of a lost forest. I'm not sure how such an estimate might be put together, but we see all sorts of wild-eyed guesses as to the money that tourists spend in forested environs. That would seem to be a good place to start.

It's conceivable that we could build a whole new industry in the West composed of new and mostly small, family owned businesses whose job it is to keep our western forests in much better health than they are today. Lord knows the know-how is here, and so is most of the equipment that would be needed, though some of it needs to be scaled down to fit the size of job that needs doing.

An ecologist friend of mine [he's famous so he shall remain nameless] told me a few years ago that he thought it would take 40-50 years to then out the West's overstocked forests and pick up all the crap that plays host to so many insects and diseases.

He liked the idea that there were still a few loggers around who could do this work, but when I asked him what he thought would happen at the end of the 50 year cycle he said, half triumphantly, "Well, I guess we won't need those loggers or mills anymore!"

I guess the puzzled look on my face bothered him because he asked me if I disagreed. Without saying yes, I asked, "What about that forest we thinned 50 years ago? Won't it need to be thinned again about time we finish our 50^th year thinning?"

If looks could kill, I would have been dead. He knew I was right. We either take care of these forests or Mother Nature will take care of them for us, and chances are we won't like her thinning program nearly as well as we like our own.

Meanwhile, here in the Intermountain West, we're headed for what looks to be another dreadful wildfire season. Winter was pretty much a non-event and spring came early. In northern Idaho, the hand-wringing over the increasing chances of another 1910-scale wildfire continues. I don't doubt that it will happen. But for a change in wind direction it could have happened in 2002 or 2008. Closer to home, the folks who build predictive fire models have begun to think awful thoughts about a fire that could run from Seeley Lake southeast all the way to Dillon. Haul out a Montana map and have a look, then tell me if you don't agree that such a fire could just as easily take out Helena. If we get "the big one" this summer, there won't be a damned thing anyone can do about it, except maybe pop open a cold beer and watch.

If you'd like to learn more about how we got ourselves into this pickle, click on "The Best of Evergreen" on the tool bar and read most any issue. As I said earlier, we've been harping about the West's forest health crisis for more than 20 years. It's nice to see a few new faces at this garden party.

And if you'd like to learn more about tree ring research, Google "University of Arizona Tree Ring Research" and you'll discover that they've got a whole damned department down there now trying to make sense of the climate changing evidence Mother Nature has left us over the last few thousand years.

Jim Petersen, Evergreen