PHIL WHITE Star-Tribune correspondent | Posted: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:00 am
LARAMIE - Hog Park campground, the largest U.S. Forest Service campground in the Sierra Madre mountains south of Saratoga, will be closed all summer because of beetle-killed trees, the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest announced Friday.
Although the 50-site campground and the Hog Park picnic ground will be closed, the reservoir boat facilities will remain open, according to a press release from the forest.
The Silver Lake campground high in the Snowy Range east of Saratoga will also be closed all season, and the South Brush Creek and Ryan Park campgrounds at the west base of the range will be partially closed all season. Ryan Park has 48 sites.
The press release quotes Brush Creek District Ranger Steve Best as saying the closings were due to safety concerns over falling beetle-killed trees.
"Crews will be working diligently to remove the dead trees, and we will reopen these facilities only when it is safe for people to be there," Best said.
Duane Short, biologist for Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, said the Forest Service is partially responsible for the closings.
"One of our concerns about the hazard tree removal is that had the Forest Service identified these woody campground areas earlier and taken some proactive steps - rather than spending most of their energy on backcountry logging projects - we feel some of these closings might not have become necessary," Short said.
Forest Service personnel were not available for comment Friday morning.
Short also said the hazard tree removal operations present special safety risks for the loggers involved.
"This is a very dangerous undertaking," he said.
The 20 campgrounds on the east side of the Snowy Range Mountains and in the Laramie Mountains east of Laramie will open on schedule, as the beetle impacts are not yet as severe in those areas, the Forest Service release said.
A total of 23 campgrounds and picnic areas in northern Colorado and southeast Wyoming will be closed for the season, representing nearly 12 percent of the 198 recreation sites across the three national forests in the area. Another 17 campgrounds will not be opened until later in the summer.
Removing dead trees in campgrounds and picnic areas is an annual project for the forests, Best said in the release.
"With the increased number of trees killed by the beetles, we'll need to close, or partially close, a few of them this year to give us the necessary time to remove the dead trees."