Tag: beetle-kill epidemic

Just a year after record snowfall throughout much of the Rocky Mountain West, the region is locked in a snow drought not seen since Jimmy Carter surrendered the White House to Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. The record dry conditions have lawmakers and industry observers extremely concerned about looming water shortages and wildfire danger.

A bill to create a working group of Colorado forest health, environment and energy experts to draft a biomass plan for coping with the beetle-kill epidemic passed on third reading in the state Senate Monday and passed on second reading in the House on Tuesday.

As strong winds whipped up again overnight in the Boulder area, where a Colorado record 169 homes have already been destroyed in the ongoing Fourmile Canyon Fire, there’s also a growing firestorm of debate over how climate change contributes to wildfires across the West.

Gov. Bill Ritter today, after a briefing with the state forester, said Colorado is headed for an average wildfire season thanks to a wet...

The latest version of a Vail biomass power plant, which would convert chipped-up, beetle-killed pine trees into electricity and heat, reportedly made the final...

In 2008, according to the EPA (pdf), Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash and only recycled about 83 million tons, or just...

While conservation groups called Wednesday’s federal appeals court decision reinstating the Clinton-era roadless rule a major victory, the state of Colorado contends its own revised rule is still a far more practical way of managing the state’s 4.2 million roadless acres. Mike King, deputy director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, said Wednesday that the 2001 Clinton rule, which provided sweeping protections against road building on nearly 60 million acres of largely undeveloped public lands nationwide, did not take into consideration wildfire mitigation or other critical economic drivers.