Piñon Bark Beetles
New Mexico’s Forests Fall Prey to the Tiniest Threat
This article was originally published in Lonely Planet Santa Fe & Taos 1 (2003)
Squat, green piñon trees that stud the blushing sandstone hills, silhouetted against a turquoise sky – this is the enduring image of New Mexico, captured by Georgia O’Keeffe and so many other artists, forever etched into the memory of visitors to the Land of Enchantment. More than this, the scent of burning piñon incense, the rich flavor of piñon nuts that for millennia provided sustenance to the tribes of this arid land, are what made this tree so deeply rooted in region’s culture and lore an official state symbol.
And in 2002, another 160,000 acres of picturesque piñon forest, twice as many as the year before, fell to the insatiable appetites of tiny Ips pini, no larger than a grain of rice but, along with its cousins in the Dendrodoctonus genii, one of the biggest threats to our nation’s evergreen forests. The piñon bark beetle, as it’s known in New Mexico, burrows under the bark of the tree, laying eggs that will hatch into larvae capable of devouring the tree from the inside out, before taking to the air as adults to begin the cycle yet again.
Long a part of every healthy evergreen ecosystem, up until the past two decades Dendrodoctonus beetles were only able to attack a tiny percentage of a healthy forest; most trees could cast out unwelcome nests by flooding them with sap. But recently, from Alaska and Canada to northern Mexico, the beetles inexplicably began reproducing two to three times more rapidly, and in greater numbers, even as rising global temperatures and unusually dry summers made the pine forests less able to resist deadly infestation.
The piñon, as well as all those who rely on its fruit (from humble squirrels to the non-gaming Indian tribes who still count on revenue from the wildcrafted crop to supplement their modest government subsidies) are suffering. Los Alamos, the Enchanted Circle and other regions are increasingly hard-hit by the beetle. More menacingly, the beetle has apparently jumped target species in the Jemez, and is now targeting Ponderosa pine.
The economic impact, from shrinking piñon crops, lost tourist dollars and growing wildfire risk, is as yet incalculable. The Forest Service continues to claim that this is a natural event, despite its lack of historic precedence. “There are just too many trees,” explained a ranger in Taos. Years of fire suppression had led to more piñon than this place was supposed to cradle, she continued. The plague, though difficult to watch, will evidently restore some ancient balance.
[Author’s note: Since this piece was published in 2003, the pine bark beetle has indeed jumped species in New Mexico – where I watched forest rangers deny that this was possible, even when I showed them sap-encrusted burrows in other evergreen species – and has since laid waste to my favorite mountain escape when I was a student at the University of New Mexico, Sandia Crest.]