Spruce Bark Beetle
Spruce Bark Beetle infestation cycles have been recurring in northern forests and the Kenai Peninsula for hundreds of years, typically around 50 year cycles. These beetles attack large mature Spruce trees eventually killing them. In the 1990’s the Kenai Peninsula had a particularly devastating infestation, usually aggravated by unusually warm summers. The 1990 infestation decimated the spruce forests in the whole region including here at TRW.
When the thick spruce forest on Jack Easterday’s 480 acre homestead was overtaken by beetles in mid 1990, he opted to sell the property to Buffalo Timber company, since the parcel was large enough to justify its own logging operation to harvest the standing dead spruce. Most other local landowners just endured standing dead spruce trees which eventually fell, and completely reorganized the local forests into meadows and alder thickets and new immature forests and sometimes to eventually better views. Here at TRW, the generally level upper areas were logged, but the slopes were not logged, and you can observe the contrasts when you hike from the upper level areas with healthy standing trees and some moss covered stumps, to the side slopes where travel is very difficult among fallen trees everywhere comingled with the new growth trees. Exercise care and caution when hiking off trail on the valley slopes, you will be stepping and climbing over an expanse of fallen timber.
Picture at left shows beetle tracks throughout the woody part of the tree below where the bark once covered.
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