SF New Mexican:
Study: Warming, drought, harmful to pinon trees. A little late for us folks east of Santa Fe. The piñons died off a few years ago. A dry pine can’t push out enough sap to encapsulate and kill beetles. Only ones in proximity to a water source survived (Arroyo Hondo, near El Gancho, still has a swath, because of the close-to-the-surface water table beneath). Read more about our 2004 die-off here, written in the midst of the invasion.
The road from Santa Fe to the Glorieta Pass is black with dead pines. They’re starting to fall over now, rotten and termite-eaten at the bases. If this is what is in store for the rest of the West’s pine trees, our states are no longer going to be places of beauty.
Page 1 of 1 pages
