USFS Closes 21 CO, WY Campgrounds For Fear Of Falling Beetle-Killed Trees- USA Today

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The U.S. Forest Service has closed some popular campgrounds in two states because of concern that trees killed by bark beetles, which are ravaging forests across the West, could topple onto visitors.

The Forest Service says 21 campgrounds and recreation sites in Colorado and Wyoming are closed for the summer and 17 other sites will open late, after dangerous trees are removed. "If they were to fall on a tent camp, they would probably kill or injure the people inside," said Francisco Valenzuela, a recreational planner with the Forest Service in Washington, D.C.

Bark beetles are a natural part of the ecosystem in Western forests, but warming temperatures and an abundance of aging lodgepole pines, which fires haven't thinned, have allowed populations of the hungry insects to explode. They now infest nearly 3,600 square miles of forest in the two states.

Swaths of 60-foot trees killed by the quarter-inch bugs might be easily toppled by wind or other disturbances. Forest Service officials say campgrounds in other parts of the country have been closed because of beetle infestations in the past, but never on the scale seen this year.

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http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080505/a_trees05.art.htm