Letters to the editor: Our forests are telling us something. Are We Listening?

Letters to the editor: Our forests are telling us something. Are We Listening?

Drive any mountain road in Summit County and you will see it: miles of standing grey timber, the skeletal aftermath of beetle kill that swept through our lodgepole and spruce forests like a slow-motion fire. We tend to frame this as a loss, and it is. But it is also a message. Our forests are telling us that the climate they were adapted to is no longer the climate they live in. Colorado’s average annual temperature has risen 2.3 degrees Fahrenh…