Fuelbreak Planned for North Side of Los Padres

The Cuddy Valley lies in the shadow of Mt. Pinos, off Interstate 5 between Lake of the Woods and Pine Mountain Club, encircled by the wooded slopes of the northern edge of Los Padres National Forest in Kern County. As in the rest of the drought-weary western states, the pines in the area are dying, riddled with a pest called an “ips,” attracted by the trees’ weakened state from fewer drops of rain, as well as a parasite known as “dwarf mistletoe.” But the woods are super-abundant, a crowded condition that forest managers attribute to past fire suppression, now adding to current fire dangers. Thinning 1,200 acres in a jagged strip around one of the mountain communities was approved by the forest supervisor in November, and the planned tree and underbrush removal could be instructive for the foothill communities that lie 50 miles to Cuddy Valley’s south in Santa Barbara County.

Brown, dead, and dying trees in Los Padres are suffering a host of problems, among them the pinyon ips (Ips confusus) and the California fivespined ips (Ips paraconfusus), or engraver beetle. Normally found in fallen tree trunks, the beetles have been aided by the drought in etching galleries of eggs and larvae into the underside of the bark of living trees, also introducing a fungus that helps the burrowing bugs kill the pines.

The lack of water that has made the trees susceptible to the beetles is worsened by too many trees inhabiting too small a space. The project report describes a recent count of 480 trees per acre in a forest that had 93 trees per acre about three decades ago. Greg Thompson, a forester and the project leader for Los Padres, described the overcrowding as a milkshake with too many straws dipped into it: “One straw works fine. Two straws, you can still share. But if you put a hundred straws in there, you see the problem. These trees aren’t getting enough water.” In fact, he said, in places where trees have been thinned, creeks that had dried up were seen to run again.