With all the dialogue about fire mitigation lately, an important piece of the forest management puzzle has been left out of the conversation—insects. And with spring on the horizon, this is the time to get educated on them.

Meet your Teller County neighbors, Don Doty, founder and chief arborist of Timberline Consulting, and Trent Hancock, owner and lead arborist of Evergreen Tree Service. Together, they have over 50 years of tree maintenance and forest management expertise.

“Here’s the thing,” says Doty, “there are people who don’t like the idea of spraying and get upset when they’re told infested trees need to be cut down— I hate that as much as anybody because I’m all about saving trees — but when a forest or even a single tree is unhealthy, the need to remove that tree to reduce a risk or because it falls on its own is potentially avoidable.”

One of the main causes of unhealthy trees is the pine beetle.

“I meet a lot of clients who are surprised to hear they’re losing trees to beetles,” Hancock said. “There’s not enough information out there, and they think pine beetles are only up north around Estes. But we’ve got pockets of them here, and if you aren’t proactive about prevention, then it gets real hard to get a handle on them once they take hold.”

Whether it’s extreme weather events, impacts caused by development, or the natural ebb and flow of an aging forest, the Pikes Peak region has wide swaths of stressed trees.

“Stressed trees attract pests,” says Doty. “It’s why we’re seeing so much infestation.”

The insects making the biggest impact to our area are the spruce beetle, Douglas fir beetle, the mountain pine beetle, and the ips Beetle. Their effect is swift. With pine beetles, you’ll see popcorn-shaped blemishes filled with red sap on your trees, followed by rapid browning, and then the death of the tree.

“Once you see signs of pine beetle on a tree, it’s already too late,” Doty said. “And each infested tree will infest three more.”

That’s big damage from a tiny pest.

“The beetle itself is about the size of a grain of rice,” Hancock said. “It lays eggs in the bark where the larvae overwinter. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and they essentially girdle the tree, cutting off its supply of nutrients. Come spring, the adults emerge and move on to infect the neighboring trees. Spraying cannot cure a tree with pine beetles; it can only stop the next tree from getting infected.”

Another pest that has been particularly bad, especially in the Divide area, is budworm. Budworms are small brown worms about an inch long which emerge in late June to early July and consume new growth on spruce and Douglas fir. They descend on long silk threads and are hard to miss if you’ve got them. Though budworms are unlikely to kill a tree by themselves, they can cause enough damage to make the tree highly susceptible to other pests and should not be ignored. Unlike pine beetles, budworm infestations can be stopped by spraying, but reactive spraying does not prevent the damage that invites other pests.

Once temperatures reach 42, the experts suggest deep root fertilization, preventative spraying, and if your trees are near water, a systemic microinjection. Though preventative care does not come cheap, costing about $25 per tree, it is a bargain compared to the $500 to $4000 bill for cutting down a dead or infested tree.

Doty says, “Aversions to spraying trees and cutting them down are understandable,” Doty said, “but sometimes you’ve got to cut down a tree to save others, and when it comes to destructive insects, spraying the tree preventatively will save it.

“So, with spring right around the corner, the time to plan is right now.”