The Pine Beetle

In Colorado, Lodgepole Pine stands are being wiped out by the beetle.  Global Warming Zealots blame the lack of a sustained freeze (twenty below for a week or more) that often decimates the Pine Beetle population. But the truth is that our efforts to fight forest fires is the real cause!  Don’t get me wrong, though.  The impact of mankind on the Colorado Lodgepole Pine population is not limited to preventing forest fires.

A contributing factor to the success of the Pine Beetle vs the Lodgepole Pine (are we playing favorites here?) is the age of the Lodgepole Pines themselves.  Large stands of trees are mature, one hundred years old or so.  Because the railroads and mining companies cleared up to 70 percent of the pine forests around the turn of the 20th century (1870’s to 1900’s) immense areas repopulated with trees of the same age.  Imagine if those environmentalists were around then!  The erosion would have ended mankind, and at the very least, the number of newspapers we would have had to print to lambaste capitalism would have wiped out the remainder of the trees.

Likewise, now we have prevented forest fires, that would only have wiped out some old growth, and we would have more young growth, which is far more resisistant to the pine beetle.
So there you have it.  Meddling environmentalists cut down trees to print newspapers to attack capitalism, what will they think of next?  I wonder how much of the land involved is owned ‘by the people’.
Look folks, capitalism and freedom, freedom to own property is our best hope.  Environmentalism and socialism are the cause of poverty.  This is just another example.  If I owned thousands of acres of trees, I would have been harvesting a small percentage every few years.  My land would be filled with a large percentage of younger, beetle resistant trees.  Private ownership is the best steward of the environment.  Unless you are a pine beetle fan.


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