There is no dispute that severe outbreaks of western spruce budworm (WSB) and mountain pine beetle (MPB) in a forest have huge visual impacts. Many land managers have worried about more, larger wildfiresand politicians have used it as an excuse for more logging. But the commonly held belief that the effects will lead to higher intensity, more rapidly spreading wildfires has been disproven many times in the last eight years by scientists. …The WSB and MPB attack trees very differently. The WSB defoliates the tree, consuming the needles, relatively quickly removing fuel from the canopy. The MPB kills the tree from the inside, leaving the dying “red” needles on the tree until they fall off in one to two years.