spruce bark beetle

A statewide advisory board tasked with managing Alaska’s forests met last week on the Kenai Peninsula for the first time in about 20 years. The group talked about conservation and projects during a short hike that followed a string of presentations.

The Kenai City Council extends agreements that access funding to deal with spruce bark beetle-killed trees.

The grant comes from the U.S. Forest Service. The money will go toward removing beetle killed trees from roadways.

The popular Cooper Landing recreation area will open next spring once road repairs are complete

U.S. Forest Service staff are planning to burn piles of beetle kill wood, as well as material that could potentially pose a fire risk, in areas of Chugach National Forest.

The Village of Ionia near Kasilof will take in spruce bark beetle kill logs from the Chugach National Forest to burn in their woodfire heaters, and to use for building homes and furniture.

This year was the fifth annual Cooper Landing Woodpile Contest, where competitors showed off their wood-stacking creativity, and participated in contest-sanctioned bribes. The first place winner impressed judges with a face-shaped woodpile.

Lee Frey, the solid waste director for the borough, said most of the spruce bark beetle-related brush from peoples' homes on the central peninsula is ending up at the Soldotna landfill, causing concerns about future storage issues as the landfill runs out of room for the material. With a new allocation of funding, the borough hopes to make space for all that slash.

Cook Inletkepeer takes up a Drawdown project every year with the goal of reducing carbon emissions locally. Inletkeeper’s Kaitlin Vadla said Re-tree would restore the loss of tree cover that’s impacted Southcentral Alaska from the spruce bark beetle issue.

Getting rid of slash is one way to mitigate wildfire risk.