Steamboat Springs visionary wins Green Effect grant to 'Re-Tree Colorado'

October 26, 8:04 PMDenver Flower and Gardening ExaminerColleen Smith

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A lodgepole pine in Vail's back bowls is one of countless victims of pine beetle kill in Colorado.

Photo By Colleen Smith

Tristan Folich of Steamboat Springs won one of five $20,000 grants awarded by National Geographic and SunChips in a contest called Green Effect. Frolich got the green light for his project and the greenbacks, according to the November 2009 issue of National Geographic. Frolich will use his grant to combat pine beetle kill by planting 20,000 lodgepole pine and other saplings. Beetles do not attack young trees. The diversified plantins will help minimize pine beetle outbreaks in the future.
In Colorado, pine beetles have devastated more than 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pine forest. In addition to having fewer trees to breath in carbon dioxide, the problem also is complicated by increased methane—worse than CO2—produced by rotting, dead trees.

Congratulations, Tristan Folich! Thank you for your vision for a greener Colorado and Earth. And thanks to National Geographic and SunChips for sponsoring this conest and providing incentive to think green and funding to carry out inventive green ideas.

The other four winners among more than 2,500 entries included a high school that was using the grant to add a greenhouse.

For more about Re-Tree Colorado, click here.

Colleen Smith began writing her first novel, Glass Halo, in the era of dinosaurs and typewriters.
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