Pine Bark Beetles - They're Not Just For Laying Waste To Colorado - Belize Sanctuary Hit Hard

[hatrack]

MOUNTAIN PINE RIDGE FOREST, Belize - A once-majestic pine forest in Belize is struggling to recover from a devastating plague of beetles that scientists say was caused by climate change. Tiny pine beetles destroyed up to 80 percent, or close to 70,000 acres (28,300 hectares), of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest near Belize's border with Guatemala when trees stressed by higher temperatures and years of water shortages could not defend themselves.

Efforts to replant were set back by a fierce forest fire two weeks ago that wiped out close to 20,000 acres (8,090 hectares) of this natural reserve, which is made up of Caribbean pines and home to small foxes, deer and birds. "For someone like me who has worked and lived in this forest my whole life, there is nothing sadder than this," said Earl Green, a forestry official who saw the beetles from the Dendroctonus family ravage the forest several years ago.

Belizean climate change scientist Kenrick Leslie said droughts caused by global warming weakened the trees, leaving them vulnerable to beetle attacks, and that it was a warning of what can happen to other forests around the world.

"Now we have a monitoring system created by nature to show what you can expect," he told a global warming conference in this small Central American country earlier this week. "It can only get worse."

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42308/story.htm