NY Times Environment:
Emblem of the West Is Dying, and No One Can Figure Out Why. The aspens here are absolutely, positively stressed by the long-term drought. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the piñon die-off, we’ve learned not to limit our view of causes. Many people blamed the bark beetle and looked no further; however, it was the drought that prevented the trees from being able to generate the normal amount of sap to encase and kill the attacking beetles. Woodpeckers and other predators had no time to respond, it all happened so fast. Months, not years. Sometimes it seemed a week would stand between a healthy tree and that sickly desaturated sage-green of one about to die. No amount of watering would save it at that point. Some say the trees were overpopulated anyway, due to an unusual amount of rain in the 80’s and early 90’s. Well, they’re almost all gone now, the hills are becoming bare like Arizona as the trees rot and roll down the mountainsides. Junipers are all that’s left. Pine nuts have gone up in price, certainly.
They say the grasses will come back and fill in. In the meantime, there’s an awful lot of dead wood about. The loss of the piñons I could almost handle; the loss of our aspens would kill me.
