The Aspen Daily News ran a column (Beetles: The Big Picture) written by Colorado Rocky Mountain School freshman Lea Linse.

Linse nicely sets-up the conundrum faced by mountain residents as the pine beetle wreaks havoc eating its way through evergreen forests.

Residents want to do something in the face of damage never seen before. But, untested, uncertain solutions leave an equation with large open end with the possible net result doing more harm than good.

She nicely weighs the ‘damned if you do; damned if you don’t’ options.

“…Taking a gamble with nature is always a scary concept, but at this point, no matter what we do we will be taking a risk. Will we do more harm than good by interfering? If we don’t step in, will we regret it in the long run? We all have to recognize that our forests are changing very rapidly, and that either way we could very likely lose wildlife and many things that we can’t picture our mountains without.” (ADN)