If you'll be in Estes Park or Rocky Mountain National Park Monday morning, you just might run into a species migration the likes of which you've never seen before: the Traveling Senatorial Subcommittee, complete with many rare and exotic creatures, including the McCainus Maverickus, the Udall Marcus, the medius circus maximus...and YOU!
The more interesting question is why this species is choosing to migrate far from its natural habitat. Officially, "it will consider climate change impacts on national parks in Colorado and related management activities." Anyone presently living in, visiting, or reading about Colorado probably can translate that to one critter: the mountain pine beetle. However, there may be a second purpose: reaching out to a scorned ego to vote for climate change legislation.
First, details for anyone who's interested in attending the hearing: Prior to the hearing, McCain and Udall will tour the park to see first-hand how climate change may be affecting the park. In order to keep logistics at a manageable level --and to stay on schedule -- the tour will not be open to the public. However, you can still attend the hearing:
10 AM Monday, August 24, 2009
Board room, Town Hall, 170 MacGregor Avenue, Estes Park
Four witnesses -- discussed below -- are scheduled to speak, but the Senate subcommittee will not take comments from the public. If any Kossack wishes to see a hearing instead of watching one on C-SPAN, I'd love to hear how it went.
Mountain pine beetles have long infested the pines of the Western United States in limited numbers. The beetles bore into a tree; over time (usually within 2 weeks of attack), the tree is overwhelmed as layers of bark are damaged enough to cut off the flow of water and nutrients. In the end, the tree starves to death. From the air, entire groves of trees after an outbreak will appear reddish. The lodgepole pine -- one of the most common trees of higher elevations -- has evolved defenses, including a thick bark, that normally would repel the beetle. Normally, the trees' best defense is the harsh winter of the Rocky Mountains: one cold snap of night temperatures below -40 degrees will kill them. And normally, a controlled burn will eradicate an outbreak. But these are not normal times.
Photo with Grand Tetons in background (credit Kurt Repanshek) showing a pine-beetle infested forest:
This outbreak, including 2 million acres across Colorado, is labeled catastrophic and unprecedented by the US Forest Service (pdf):
The current high rate of lodgepole pine mortality due to the mountain pine beetle event has forest managers very concerned about the future of this species in Colorado. There is concern that the high rate of mortality will continue and could possibly deplete the supply of large-diameter trees in as little as five years.
The same or similar beetles have already devastated the pinon forests of Arizona and New Mexico. They're moving north and upslope into colder places, up to Alberta, Canada. The lodgepole pine may follow the American chestnut into near-extinction, or it may find an uneasy peace with its parasite as the elm has. In the short-to-medium run, however, the pine beetle is poised to devastate the forests of the Rocky Mountains. Is human-caused climate change the underlying cause of the pine beetle's epidemic? Short answer: the Climate Change Resource Center of the US Forest Service reports (I'm paraphrasing a lot) probably, although not enough is known about the life cycle of the beetle and it's hard to predict the exact path that climate will take in the region.
Rocky Mountain National Park has changed since I visited fifteen years ago, when I was shocked but not killed by lightning. Sheeps Lake, without any pine beetles (credit NPS): Currently, the NPS advises campers that two campgrounds look extremely different than they have in the past, and in one, the majority of trees have been killed. Mortality of lodgepole pine trees is approaching 100% in Rocky Mountain National Park (see Herbert Frost paragraph for link). The lodgepole takes 100 to 150 years to reach maturity, and the beetles prefer to nest in older trees, so expect the park to remain this way for a number of years.
And now for the postage-stamp-costing* question: why is the Senate Subcommittee traveling to Rocky Mountain National Park? Note that I chose "postage stamp" because the CBO has estimated the cost of enacting landmark cap & trade legislation to be a postage stamp per day (pdf). To answer that question, I looked at the past writings and speeches by the people who will be testifying to Senators McCain and Udall.
Herbert Frost, an associate director of the NPS, recently testified to Congress about the pine beetle epidemic (pdf).
Alice Madden, a former Democratic leader in state government, is lauded as a climate warrior and praised by ThinkProgress.
Stephen Saunders founded the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, which appears to be cast in the same mold as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.
However, the most interesting witness might be David Schimel, who has written extensively on carbon emissions and carbon sinks.
This is great news for John McCain's ego! Since losing the presidential bid, he's been skeptical of any climate change legislation, whining to Roll Call that
none of the principal Democratic negotiators on climate change has reached out to him. He noted he is working, as he did last year, with Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) on a climate change bill. "I have not lost my zeal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "But I don’t think [Democratic leaders] have any Republicans."
Now, not only is Mark Udall reaching out to him, he's taking him on a guided tour of one of the most beautiful, yet wounded parts of our country, and he's scheduled witnesses who will uniformly speak out in favor of the need for significant climate change legislation. That legislation, the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES, aka cap & trade, aka Waxman-Markey) will be taken up this fall. If you're in the neighborhood and interested in following progress on both the pine beetle and the planet, please attend this Monday, 8/24/09, in Estes Park, Colorado.