The Colorado Department of Natural Resources’ and Gov. Jared Polis’ “Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force”—created in December in reaction to the latest natural wave of native mountain pine beetles in Front Range forests—consists primarily of representatives from governments, agencies, industries, and NGOs that carry out and/or promote scientifically-contested “wildfire fuel reduction” logging on public lands.

Included on the February 19 list of appointees from Department of Natural Resources (DNR)—whose January press release defied the consensus of peer-reviewed science to make the debunked link between beetles and wildfire—is nearly every entity in Colorado leading the charge to demand more taxpayer dollars to log public lands in the name of wildfire.

Despite calls to balance the Task Force, nowhere on the list is a single independent scientist without conflict of interest nor representative of a conservation group the least bit critical of the industry/government narrative on wildfire and forests.  

DNR appointees include representatives from:

 -The Colorado Timber Industry Association and Colorado Mass Timber Coalition;

-The US Forest Service, whose “Big Four” logging schemes total almost half a million acres (474,872) of National Forests along the entire length of Colorado’s Front Range Rocky Mountains in seven counties, including 61,439 acres across seventeen Roadless Areas (including clearcutting, logging in endangered species habitat, and mature and old-growth forests);

-The National Forest Foundation, the de facto NGO arm of the U.S. Forest Service;

-The Bureau of Land Management, which carries out taxpayer funded logging, livestock ranching, mining, and drilling across the western U.S;

-Jefferson County (represented by Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper), which has pushed some of the most aggressive logging not just in Colorado but the entire western United States, including clearcutting and mature and old-growth tree logging;

-DNR’s Colorado Forest Health Council, formed in part to promote public lands logging in the name of wildfire;

-The Nature Conservancy, whose $1.8 billion annual budget has increasingly shifted from funding land conservation to “working lands” extraction, including promoting and carrying out public lands logging and livestock ranching.

Ex Officio “non-voting” members appointed by DNR include representatives from:

-Colorado State Forest Service, the main state entity logging public lands and promoting the timber industry;

-Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, which publicly promotes aggressive “fuel reduction.” However, behind the scenes (as proven in Colorado Open Records Act emails) CFRI admits that abundant science contests the efficacy of such logging and that the agencies tend to “overpromise” results, while advising governments to never admit this publicly for fear of allowing a “win for the opponents” (i.e. scientists, advocates, and local concerned citizens).

Ex-Officio members appointed by the governor include Congress’ biggest supporters of Trump’s public lands logging agenda:

-Senator John Hickenlooper, sponsoring the Orwellian “Fix Our Forests” Act to dismantle bedrock environmental laws to rush through logging in the name of wildfire;

-Senator Michael Bennet, who has introduced bills for up to $60 billion in taxpayer funding to log public lands while pushing the U.S. Forest Service to do even more logging in the name of wildfire;

-Rep. Joe Neguse, who has not just promoted but funded clearcutting and old growth tree logging in Jefferson County;  

-Rep. Brittany Pettersen, whose district is home to the largest logging project in Colorado history and has long promoted “fuel reduction” logging.

The Beetle Task Force is overseen by the Assistant Director for DNR’s Forest Health and Wildfire Mitigation, which oversees Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Program (COSWAP) that funds the vast majority of “fuel reduction” logging projects in Colorado.

The consensus science—including studies coming from CU Boulder and Colorado State University—finds either no uptick or even a DECREASE in the risk of forest fire following a wave of mountain pine beetles (aside from a brief one to three-year window for individual trees as needles die and before they are shed). Only home hardening and defensible space pruning—not forest cutting—have been shown to protect homes from wildfire.

For weeks, DNR ignored requests by Colorado scientists and environmental advocates asking for meetings and only responded after state legislators intervened.

Despite running articles uncritically reporting DNR’s scientifically-debunked talking points, only one Colorado media outlet has thus far reported on concerns from the scientific and environmental community with the industry/government perspective on beetles, wildfire, and forests.