Received in the P2P Rotary email today:
Hello,
My name is John Burtschi and I sit on the board of directors for the Gilpin County Citizens Initiative with Wes Isenhart. GCCI and my 3 year old company, Mountain Pine Beetle Consultants LLC (StopTheBeetleNow.com) have started a MPB prevention project called “Force in the Forest”. This project is a grassroots volunteer effort to pro-actively attack the MPB in our home forests. We see how the current war against the beetle is not working and with our experience and knowledge we feel we must change our approach to battling the beetle before it is too late. Our first project area this year is scheduled for a large area from Black Hawk north 119 and along Clear Creek in Apex Valley(to protect the water way). Our goal is to protect the all the mountain views along the Peak To Peak Highway.
The Plan: Use pheromones and nature (topography, winds, etc.) to push the beetles into chosen areas where we will use lures and traps to kill them. We will be actively training volunteers to identify, picture and GPS coordinates of brood trees within the protected areas and coordinating “Saw Days” where trained volunteers will cut and debark those trees. Slash piles will be created and marked (GPS) for future burn (winter) or removed to county slash pile.
Most of the land in our first project area is private or BLM, some of it is NFS land. We would like present our project to The Peak To Peak Rotary in hopes that your group may help us recruit the hundreds of volunteers and help spread word of our fund raising efforts.
An volunteer organizational meeting is going to be held on May 8th at 10am the Gilpin County Barn.
I look forward to our conversations.
A little message from Cora Meneceur of the Rotary Rail and Water Tour:
