Four years into the drought, bark beetles did what was expected of them in the conifer woods of Tuolumne County.

They bored into the trunks of moisture-stressed pines, cutting off the trees’ nutrient flow. Millions of dead trees mark the landscape, some of them in towns along Highways 108 and 120.

Tuolumne is near the northern edge of a scourge that started in the southern Sierra Nevada and has killed an estimated 66 million trees as of June. Experts on the tour said it could top 100 million by year’s end. The beetles hit hardest in ponderosa pines, not the firs and cedars that also are part of the mixed-conifer belt.

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Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/news/article107357942.html#storylink=cpy