Burning green conifers to destroy pine beetle habitat

[SwampDonkey]

The precise wording is "as much about looks as it is bugs".    As your local forester(s) seem to have told you, you need to thin at this point. But that's only effective if the trees can respond positively if they are now healthy. A suppressed, weakling isn't going to spring back to full vigour. With white pine, blister rust and weevils, the two not in your list of damage agents, are most likely to cause grief than bugs in slash piles. Have any of those local foresters visited your woods? You may be getting some type of herbicide entering from fields as you were offered. However, I have no information on how some of those chemicals can move. Then there is the possibility of root disease which gets amplified by root grafting between the pines. I have a small spot on the edge of my woods, where fir, spruce and aspen die. Don't know what it is, but it's just a tiny patch within a 6 foot radius. And I don't see ants. The soil is well drained. My suspicions are that the logger dumped his burnt oil and jugs under the berm that was pushed up when making a yard. A common practice I see quite often.

I care about your 15 acres to. I don't get paid to be here, so 15 acres or 20,000 acres I'm still poor.

[bigsnowdog]

I appreciate your help. To say I am an uneducated forester is to suggest I am any sort of forester at all. I have learned a lot the hard way in these efforts since 1979.

I am, in addition to thinning, also removing any trees that lack vigor or seem in questionable health. Thirty years ago I had the idea that you plant a tree and it lives because there will be nothing to kill it. How wrong could I be? At times it is depressing to see all the things that cause mortality.

[beenthere]

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I have had roughly 10% of my white pines die over a period of five years for unexplainable reasons. Evaluation includes specimens being analyzed by state forestry and entomology labs. Their best explanation is stress. One suggestion to reduce stress is to thin. Ag chemicals are another possible factor. The mortality has followed a rather distinct path through the planting. It is about 2/3 of the way through.
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That info helps a lot. 
There may be something to the knowledge that white pine are out of their range in IA.

Hopefully you don't become discouraged over our responses, but even your experts can only come up with a "best explanation is stress". I think our responses were meant to help you get through the exercise of burning green white pine and your plea for help to do it with no money for a chipper, no money for a grapples, and what appeared to be a lack of information as to why. We could only attempt to read between the lines. We were just as frustrated trying to help you with your "problem".

[woodtroll]

You gave another clue in the "path" of dead trees. Causes of tree death can be many, but they leave clues. Pine beetle, doesn't matter which, would show evidence. They attack live trees. You should see bore holes, sap, and sometimes saw dust when first attacked. The trees should have galleries (beetle tunnels)under the bark. The different bark beetles have distinct galleries, whether the tunnel is filled with in with saw dust or open, or the shape of the nuptial chamber. Ips leave their gallery open, (mountain) pine bark beetles fill theirs.
Both beetles attack stressed trees. The tree can be stressed from being to thick or affected by other pathogens.

 

[terry f]

sorry Bob I thought Ips and pine beatle here were the same thing. doesent seem to hit the ponderosa but if you remember this area in the 70s and early 80s it looked like montana does now. which beatle was that and do you think the old BCC lands are in as good of stewardship as they were with boise.

[BaldBob]

Terry,
That was the Mountain Pine Beetle that was responsible for hitting the Eastern Oregon Lodgepole so heavily in the 70's & 80's. Both MPB and Ips are bark beetles, but Ips usually only causes top kill in otherwise healthy trees. The Mountain Pine Beetle can and does cause extensive mortality in Ponderosa. A few stands of pole to small saw timber sized PP that I didn't get thinned soon enough, just North of Elgin, OR and some in the Dayton, WA, area suffered some heavy MPB mortality in the early 80's.  Colorado is currently  experiencing heavy mortality in both their Lodgepole and Ponderosa from it.  However, except in the most extreme outbreaks, mortality to PP from it usually occurs in younger trees that are overstressed by either over crowding or drought. Unlike Lodgepole,which produces little resin, a healthy Ponderosa can "pitch out" the beetles unless it is overwhelmed by sheer numbers of attacking beetles. Because if that trait, while thinning in Lodgepole prior to a beetle outbreak is usually only marginally effective in protecting the stand, Ponderosa stands can be made almost beetle proof with this practice.

The current owners of the former BCC lands have different objectives than we had when I was managing those lands. Their level of harvest is heavier than what we did. But overall, from what I saw prior to my leaving that area  in 2009 (retired from BCC in 2000), they seemed to be practicing good forestry. They seem to lean more heavily to even-aged management than I did.  I managed about 50% of the stands (the drier sites) on an uneven aged basis, while they seem to be putting 80 -90% of the stands on an even-aged regime. While even-aged management may not be as aesthetically appealing as uneven aged management, biologically it is not necessarily inferior.

[terry f]

Thanks Bob,I prefer uneven stand. I like seeing the bigger trees and you know how long they take to grow on the dry side of oregon, but i'm not a forester and don't have to make money from the harvest.

[bigsnowdog]

My district forester has read this thread and is engaging in further discussion with other state foresters and entomologists. He indicated good questions were raised in the thread.

[woodtroll]

Terry,
I recently had the pleasure of hearing the gentleman from Alberta and their massive strategy to hold strong against the m pine beetle.
It sounds good and practical. It has to do with setting areas of priority for management. Areas that are to far gone, areas that can be helped with thinning and harvesting then areas on the out skirts using individual treatment of trees. It is all to get the forest thinned to a healthy level in the pine, an uneven aged level also.
I need to start a new thread.

Bigsnowdog, glad to hear it.