I live in the middle of an enormous pine forest that stretches from Canada to Mexico along the spine of the Rocky Mountains. This forest is infested with the mountain pine beetle, which has been killing all (at least most) of the maturelodge pole pine trees.
Our mountain resort community is reliant on our beautiful mountain views, so a frequent question has been "will home prices drop when the trees have all died?"
During the summer that the pine beetles attack new trees, the pine tree needles turn a rust color that is very distinctive. Over the next couple of years, they drop their needles and only the skeleton remains. At that point, sunlight can get down to the ground and the understory starts to thrive.
Now that we are about 5 years into this cycle of pine beetles, we can now see that where the dead trees have been removed, there are nice, open meadows. In wide areas of dead pine trees, aspen trees are spreading out and small pine trees are growing vigorously. From a distance, the forest is still beautiful and no, home prices have not dropped (at least due to the pine beetle :). We are also seeing more wildlife, which need open space and small trees/bushes to thrive.
Just as our housing market is growing again, the pine trees will regain their place in the landscape, but are not as visually important as we feared.
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