Thinning Colorado forests to reduce fire danger also helps bees and flowers, research shows – By William Allstetter (Colorado Sun) / Dec 29, 2023
Research from Colorado State and Utah State has also shown an increased resilience to climate change as an another benefit to reshaping the forest
Amore-than-decadelong effort to thin Front Range forests to reduce fire danger has brought more bees, more flowers and increased resilience to climate change, new research shows.
The raw number and the diversity of bees and plants exploded a few years after ponderosa pine forests were restored to a “pre-European” state, researchers from Colorado State and Utah State universities found.
“We found that if you cut trees and open up the canopy, between three and 10 years later, you see a pretty good response,” said Seth Davis, associate professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University and co-author of a study recently published in “Ecological Applications.”
“Forest restoration and forest thinning is one of the ways that we can conserve our native communities.”
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