There's no magic pill in State Forester Bob Harrington's office to cure Montana's mountain pine beetle infestation, but there might be a political one.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer asked for such a fix during his Missoula visit on Tuesday. Harrington came up empty in the magic department, but did have plans for getting the little beetle on the radar of the Western Governors Association, which Schweitzer chairs. Part of that, the pair agreed, is expanding understanding of the problem.

"It's like the war in Afghanistan," Schweitzer said. "What's the definition of winning? Where does it end?"

"Where it ends in the next two to five years is a lot of landscape that people value will look different," replied Harrington.

Beyond the "red-and-dead" forest fire hazards, there are matters such as the loss of downhill and cross-country ski terrain because snow blows off denuded slopes. There are viewsheds that lose real estate value because they're no longer lush and green. There are hunting areas no longer accessible because the fallen lodgepole become a giant obstacle course. And there's a Montana logging industry uncertain if beetle-killed timber is an economic life ring or an ironic dead weight to its business needs.

Schweitzer said he recently hired a logging crew to thin threatened trees on his ranch, and felt gut-punched when he learned how little he'd earn from the logs. Lodgepole timber barely pays enough to pay its way out of the woods, Harrington agreed.

But long-term commodity markets are about limiting your losses until a good time comes around. For Montana, that means keeping its timber industry alive through a period of low lumber prices and a flat construction market so it can help confront the beetle problem.

The alternative, Harrington said, can be seen in Colorado, where thousands of beetle-killed acres have been logged but there's no lumber mill left in the state to do anything with the wood.

"In a lot of the rest of the country, the cards have already been played," Harrington said. "Here, we can still have people at work in the forest."

The matter has similar interest north of the U.S. border, where the Alberta provincial government has spent $200 million in the past three years combating beetle infestations. British Columbia officials estimate they've lost half their marketable pine forests to the bug, according to reports in the Edmonton Journal.

Bringing the beetle before the Western Governors Association should help craft a regional response, Schweitzer said. Part of that will involve getting more attention by the federal departments of Agriculture and Interior to prescriptive logging. Another thing the governors can do is increase pressure on Congress to take action on modernizing the country's energy policy.

And Montana's Department of Natural Resources and Conservation can be a model with its methods of sustainable logging and active forest management.

"Look at how we've managed our lands the last 50 years," Schweitzer said. "I'd like the Forest Service to manage their lands the same way."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.