Federal report shows bark beetles, disease kills trees across Southwest

The lack of monsoon rains last year likely caused bark beetles and other diseases to kill trees across more than a half million acres of the Southwest, according to a U.S. Forest Service report. The report was sourced from a combination of radar flyovers and ground surveying across 23.2 million acres of the Southwest region as a forest health status check for land managers. The survey reported a majority of the tree deaths from bark beetles were ponderosa pine and pinyon trees.