Are your pine and spruce in danger?

A supportive member of our community, Kimberly Kraan, offers this excellent observation and advice:

“I've spent the last few days researching this stuff. The arborist, we hired to treat our trees, walked ourselves & neighbors around to show us infested trees, and gave us an informative crash-course tutorial on spotting these issues.

Sadly, one of our immediate neighbors just had two large old growth spruces taken out as result of infestation of pine bore/back beetles.

Three of us surrounding him have since had our trees treated, as precaution. The neighbor directly adjoining him also has some infected trees. :(

There are a lot of old growth pines in our neighborhoods. The beetles tend to prefer spruce, but will get into the scotch or austrian pines, if those trees are stressed (lack of water, drought, heat, other issues).

It might be worth checking and treating your trees. Removing dying/dead pines and/or having trees inspected & treated for bore/bark beetles.

For most people living in this area, we love our large pine trees, and seeing infestations with potential to wipe out older pines is alarming to say the least.

It's not cheap to have trees treated, as preventative, or taken out if infected. Most people ignore the issue letting their trees die, while beetles thrive and look for new food sources. Meanwhile, trees are quietly getting infected and will die within a few years. The best medicine is an ounce of prevention, right?!

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5195928.pdf

https://ffsl.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/wpbfactsheet-final.pdf

[random local tree service explaining treatments, link] https://reliabletreecare.com/insect-control/borers-beetles-treatment/