The pertinent bills include:

House Bill 1110 (Witwer, Kopp) creates a five-year program (2009 to 2014) that allows landowners to deduct the costs of their wildfire mitigation from their state income tax (up to $2,500).

HB 1269 (Gibbs, White) provides a sales-tax exemption (through July 1, 2014) for sales, storage and use of wood products from beetle-kill trees. Cities and counties have the option of enacting similar sales-tax exemptions.

HB 1318 (Lundberg, Taylor) creates the voluntary Beetle Mitigation Fund, administered by the Colorado State Forest Service, to mitigate and remove beetle-infested trees from state-owned land. The public will be able to donate to the fund online.

?EUR??,,????'??We cannot stop the bark beetle epidemic, but we can and must take steps to address the resulting devastation,?EUR??,,????'?? said Rep. Christine Scanlan.

Senate Bill 71 (Gibbs, Scanlan) extends the forest-restoration pilot program through 2012 and provides $1 million a year to help communities implement forest treatment projects to reduce wildfire fuels and protect Colorado?EUR??,,????'???s watersheds. In 2007, the pilot funded 12 different forest restoration projects around the state.