An early spring is upon us, and I hope you’re out enjoying the natural wonderland that is Colorado’s public lands.

As Eco-Integrity Alliance promotes its vision of protecting all public lands as Biodiversity, Watershed & Climate Refugia, industry, government, and NGO logging interests are at it once again, whipping up even more wildfire hysteria to exploit the latest natural wave of native mountain pine beetle for yet another round of “Beetlemania.”

Consensus science—including from some of the world’s leading ecology experts here in Colorado—has debunked the link between beetles and an increased risk of landscape wildfire ignition or high-severity fire (read about the peer-reviewed science).

Despite the facts, government agencies such as Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR) are pushing beetle myths harder than ever, commandeering millions in taxpayer dollars to keep their funding flowing and get out the cut for their partners in the logging industry.

BEETLE TASK FORCE

To this end, Gov. Jared Polis created the Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force, which he and DNR have stacked almost 100 percent with the state’s biggest cheerleaders for unrestrained logging (read more about the Task Force members).

Last month, Eco-Integrity Alliance and advocates from across the state met with both DNR and staff from the governor’s office to ask that they appoint—at the very least—two independent scientists and two members of the conservation community to the Task Force.

DNR refused to add anyone new, not even “ex officio” members without voting rights. (Not particularly shocking from the agency instrumental in axing the recent statehouse bill that would’ve routed a percentage of “wildfire mitigation” funding from exclusively logging towards home hardening grants for low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans.)

So, we sent out an action alert urging you to please call Gov. Polis and ask him to balance out the Task Force. After your crucial public pressure, we set up a meeting with representatives from his office to voice those same concerns. They said they’d look into the possibility of new appointees, and we’re in the process of following up with them now.

Sadly, many media outlets in the state continue to run straight up government disinformation on beetles, forests, and wildfire without any fact-checking while censoring the scientific and conservation community in both reporting and opinion pieces. However, after outreach from Eco-Integrity Alliance, Colorado Public Radio and Aspen Times/Summit Daily ran some pretty balanced articles that included varying perspectives on beetles and forests, quoting CU professor emeritus scientist Dr. Tom Veblen.

While we continue to push to restore participatory democracy here in Colorado, in the meantime we’d like to ask you to please take a few minutes to send in some brief comments to the Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force, so they know people care about this issue.

5 MINUTE ACTION

Feel free to write whatever you like, however we suggest the following (or some version of it) based on the consensus science, which you can submit to the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe_6dTc_MKFk7_PQnbuoacPuvL1HNTb1l72xeIonSovMTRUVQ/viewform

1) So long as the Beetle Task Force consists almost entirely of those with financial conflicts of interest for carrying out and/or promoting “fuel reduction” as the primary tool of “forest management,” its findings will have little to no legitimacy.

2) The consensus of peer-reviewed science concludes there is no credible link between the native mountain pine beetle and a landscape-wide increased risk of wildfire ignition or high-severity wildfire.

3) Protecting public forests and funding home hardening grants for low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans should be our government’s top priority for protecting communities from wildfire, not tree removal.