Don Hardin’s hillside was largely cleared of trees killed by the mountain pine beetle in April with help from his neighbors but now, in early July, an overwhelming number stand dead. 

Some of the trees have died in just a few weeks with Ips beetles munching their tops and mountain pine beetles coming through their bark in large visible holes, Hardin explained.  

Hardin, now 70, estimates 400 trees have been taken down across his 21 acres, including many that were scorched and weakened when the Black Forest fire moved through his property. 

The 2013 fire burned more than 14,000 acres and consumed Hardin’s historical barns and corrals built by the Vollmer brothers, homesteaders in the area. The Hardin family bought the ranch from the Vollmers in the 1940s and Don and his wife still live in a 101-year-old cabin that was spared by the fire. The blaze consumed about 500 homes. 

Now, Hardin is combating fire danger by taking down ponderosa pines, along with many of his neighbors who live in the part of Black Forest where the beetle has hit hardest, near the School in the Woods between Shoup and Burgess Roads along Vollmer Road. 

“Everybody is doing their best,” Hardin said. “… We aren’t giving up.” He noted his goal is to have all the dead trees down by fall. While Hardin expects in a few years his wooded land will be largely grass, some of the youngest trees seem to be surviving the beetle.

Across Colorado, mountain pine beetles also are on the rise in Douglas, Jefferson and Gilpin counties, among other areas, said Dan West, forest entomologist with the State Forest Service. The agency’s annual aerial survey shows the number of infected acres increasing from less than 2,000 acres in 2021 to nearly 6,000 acres last year.

“Bark beetles are only going to build this upcoming year,” West said.

Across national forest lands, the beetles have an “elevated presence” in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest and, to a lesser degree, the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, said Jose Negron, research entomologist with the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.

To combat the beetle, the State Forest Service is putting small packets on trees to send the message to mountain pine beetles to seek a home elsewhere, West said. 

The message will be sent through a synthetic replication of beetle pheromones that sends a “no-vacancy signal” to adult pine beetles looking for a healthy tree to infest, West said. To a beetle, the pheromones say that the tree is already hosting beetles and there won’t be enough food for more eggs, he explained. 

It’s not a perfect system. Of the 65,000 trees West and his team hope to protect, 12% to 20% are still expected to get infested. As the numbers of pine beetles increase, as they are expected to, the pheromones probably will become less effective, West explained. 

But it is a way to fight back against a beetle that hit 81% of the state’s forests between 1996 and 2014. 

The El Paso County Parks Department also has been combating the beetle. Like Hardin, the county is taking trees down in the Pineries Open Space, a ribbon of about 1,000 acres that straddles the Palmer Divide. The area started to see problems with mountain pine beetles in 2022, Parks Manager Kyle Melvin said.

This spring, the county’s contractor identified and removed 12 clusters of trees infected with the tell-tale signs of beetles and chipped them to ensure the larvae will die inside a small wood chip, he explained. It’s work that cost almost $30,000, Melvin said.

But it’s an investment that’s important to the county after losing so many trees on the property to the Black Forest fire. Dead trees also are a safety concern near trails.

“Safety, fire mitigation and aesthetics are our primary motivation,” Melvin said.

The county’s contractor focused on clumps of trees of three or more to get most out of the time and money invested, he explained.

Last year, the county’s contractor removed 15 clusters. This year, the new contractor sent three people instead of just one to look for infected trees, but found fewer clusters, so Melvin said he is hopes the beetles might be on the decline on the public open space because they removed so many infested trees, he said. But it’s tough to tell from only three years of data.

“We are still being a good neighbor by trying to control the population as much as we can,” he said.

The county is aware of the pheromone packets the State Forest Service is using and it could be a tool into the future to protect high-value trees near playgrounds or pavilions on other county park properties, he said.

Melvin said he encourages residents to consider them, if they have trees around their homes they want to protect.

While spring rain did produce some lush, green plants across Black Forest, it doesn’t seem to have done much to keep trees alive in and around Hardin’s property.

It probably is just not enough to offset a lack of strong snowpack at the lower elevations that soaks deep into the soil, said forester Keith Worely, who works in Black Forest. Trees need a healthy amount of moisture to make resin that can serve as a mechanical barrier against beetles. 

“We are in our 25th year of the forest being in a long-term drought,” he said. 

Black Forest residents can combat the outbreak by thinning out trees that are packed tightly together.

Then the wood needs to be removed or chipped, because if it’s stacked up, the beetles will just fly off to a nearby host tree. 

In Worley’s opinion, the beetles are set to move west from Black Forest, and helping to keep them in check will take all landowners.  

“Mountain pine beetle is like wildfire, in that everybody has to work together,” Worley said. 

For residents taking down trees, the Black Forest Slash/Mulch Program on Herring Road is accepting slash loads for $10 each this season.