BONNINGTON LUMBER CO.

Spruce Loggers Wage All-Out \(/ar on Bark Beetles

By Hanley Morse

(Second of a series of articles about bark beetle ravages in Inland Empire spruce forests. Mr. Morse is l\{ontana-IdahqE. Washington forest engineer for the \\'estern Pine Assn.)

Dooley Cratnp, boss of Potlatch Forests, Inc.'s Camp 44 irr tl-re Fishhook country south of Avery, took an ax and peeled out a six-by-eight-inch section of bark from an Engelmann spruce tree. "Count 'em," he suggested to Logging Superintendent Earl Ritzheimer and the writer.

They did, and in the little chunk of bark found no less than 37 beetles, adults and larvae. The tree was "lottsy" with beetles. It was dead, too, killed last fall by the bugs.

But the beetles were not dead. They lvere just dormant. When the weather warms up they come to life. The dead spruce is no longer attractive to them. They head for living trees, drill into the bark, feed on tree juices, multiply and leave when that tree is dead.

There were estimated thousands of beetles in the single tree Dooley Cramp sarnpled. There were estimated millions of beetles in the spruce swale where this tree stood among other tall spruces. And nearly every spruce had been worked over by woodpeckers, those tireless friends of tree farmers everywhere. Obviously, u'oodpeckers had gorged on beetles but had only made a dent in the bug suPPlY.

The very next day the bugs met their match. \{en with chain sarvs came in, felled the dead and dying spruce trees. Choker setters, working in the deep snow, put steel ropes around the logs and polverful tractors hauled them away to the landing. In a matter of minutes, the logs were aboard trucks. bound for the Milwaukee railroad at Avery, there to be transferred to railroad cars and hauled to I'tills at Potlatch and Coeur d'Alene. \\'ith the logs rvent the beetles, never again to cherv into a tree.

That's horv loggers all over the Inland Empire are engaged today against the greatest spruce beetle infestation of modern times.

Thel' are striking trvo blows-one at the beetle horde and the other at \\'aste. By harvesting "bug trees" they are saving other trees fronr attack, and at the same time are putting to use vast volumes of fine rvood that would otherwise be lost through decay in the rvoods.

There is only one other rvay to try to stop the beetle sweep. That's by spraying the tree trunks. This is expensive. The U.S. Forest Service plans to do some spraying, in areas where it's justified in order to buv some time. But for the greater part, control b1' logging is the primary concern of the forest managers.

Iingelmann spruce, a tree of great promise in the region's plans for a sustained timber economy, makes up about l0 per cent of the region's total sar+'timber supply. About 8O per cerrt of the l2l billion feet of spruce is on the seven national forests-the Cabinet, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Clearwater, Lolo and St. Joe. The rest is on tree farms and other privately owned lands.

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