Over the last two years, an outbreak has affected more than 500,000 acres of forest.

Since the 2012 wind storm, the forest in Cheney Lake Park has been rapidly transforming from native cottonwoods to a variety of exotic ornamental trees.

Interior Alaska’s hot and dry summer of 2013, coupled with an invasion of insect pests, has taken a steep toll on the region’s birch trees, experts say.

Dead, red trees signal an increasingly dire outbreak driven by warm summers and plentiful spruce, especially in the Susitna Valley.

5-15-13 Spruce aphid infestation Kake, Alaska, USA

The worst-hit areas appear to be established neighborhoods with older spruce trees, especially in Turnagain and Spenard.

The iconic pine trees blanketing Jasper National Park may never be the same as a mountain pine beetle epidemic has infected nearly half of the park's pine forest.

We are worried about the effects of large infestation and about wildlife.

ALBANY - After years of trying to slow a voracious Chinese beetle that is decimating ash trees, state environmental officials are waving the white flag: The Department of Environmental Conservation dropped a logging quarantine, and said it might be time to cut healthy trees still uninfested. In a brief notice posted online Wednesday, the DEC repealed logging restrictions that had failed to contain the spread of the emerald ash borer (EAB) by limiting shipments of ash. The state created the quarantine in 2015 to slow the insect, which is a shiny green beetle about the size of a penny. The borer likely will ultimately bring about the end of the state's 700 million ash trees - down from earlier estimates of 900 million ash trees before the beetles' arrival - and forever change an industry that uses ash to produce bats for major league baseball.

The Western New York landscape is now strewn with dead and dying Ash trees. The evidence of the Ash Borer's destruction is crystal clear, and our environment may never be the same.