VAIL, Colo. — For 35 years, Peter Runyon has been photographing the stunning landscapes of this Rocky Mountain resort. His postcards capture winter's showy white and summer's serene green, flecked with wildflowers in yellow, purple and red.
This summer, two new colors streaked the familiar peaks: the orange of dying trees and the ghostly gray of dead ones.
An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege. Tens of millions of Colorado's mature pine trees will die within the next few years. Millions more are falling in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and into Canada. Federal and state forest managers have conceded defeat: There is no way to stop the hungry swarm.
Slope after slope will turn the rusty-orange hue of a cheap hair dye. Then the needles will fall from the towering lodgepole pines in Idaho and Colorado and from the ancient white-bark pines in Montana and Wyoming. The trees may stand, skeletal, for a year or two, but eventually they will topple. Millions of acres in treasured national lands, including vast swaths of wilderness in and around Yellowstone National Park, will be affected.
"You're going to see a lot of gray sticks out there," said Cary Green, a timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service.
The deaths of so many millions of trees will create an enormous fire risk across the West. Wildlife habitats will shift, as deer, elk and bear may find it hard to survive on the barren mountains (though rabbits, raccoons and other small animals will thrive). As the dead trees crash down, hundreds of miles of biking and hiking trails will likely become impassable.
Homeowners are already noticing a less serious consequence of the beetles' march: Their once-secluded retreats in the woods are no longer shielded by curtains of green.
"We're starting to see little patches where you're able to see your neighbors like you never could before," said Chuck Swanson, the town engineer for the wealthy ski retreat of Winter Park, Colo. "As one guy I know put it, now you have to close your drapes."
The dark-brown mountain pine beetle, about the size of a grain of rice, is a natural part of the alpine forest ecosystem. They tend to make their mark in cycles; every 20 years or so, the beetle population will surge and large numbers of trees will fall.
But this current cycle has broken all the rules.
