It makes a number of valid points and I am watching this transformation of our forests right outside my front door. this is a major issue out here, there are the fires, timber harvest, beetles, and "rust" - a fungi, killing off the forests of the west. A major factor is the warming, it isn't cold enough for long enough to kill off the larvae in winter, and other tree killing elements but there isn't much mention, outside the northern Rockies, about a major human contribution to the ill health of our forests.
There also four dams on the Columbia and upper Snake Rivers which have, in less than 30 years after construction, depleted the salmon fisheries all over the northern Rockies. How is that, one might ask? The health of any flora is dependent upon availability of nutrients for survival and to thrive, pass on genetics. What does a mountain forest need for food? It needs everything extant within its ecosystem prior to our messing it up which includes the bodies of kazillions of spawned-out salmon and any other anadramous fish who originate in the ecosystem. Salmon begin their life in small creeks, streams in headwaters of great waterways that drain into the ocean. These smolts (baby fish) feed on their parents and other fish as they make their way to the ocean where they live for up to four years, depending on the actual species' life cycle, and feed on ocean derived nutrients. According to their natural cycle each species returns to its place of birth/hatching to leave their progeny to carry out another cycle. The important thing about this cycle is that the mature fish do not feed on the journey home yet they bring ocean derived nutrients back home with them, phosphates and nitrates that are not found in their birthplace which happens to be up to 1700 miles inland... in the Rockies. With the obstruction of the dams along a major inland to sea waterway, the salmon have only returned in paltry numbers. This has been going on since the dam construction era (1930's - 1950's) which has had an adverse affect on the inland landscape by literally cutting off the flow of nutrients from the sea to high mountain streams in the Rockies (and elsewhere). Without the ocean derived nutrients delivered by the salmon, the forests essentially ended up with all kinds of health issues from inability to feed the fauna in the region who depend on all things fed by the salmon - just about all other species directly or indirectly - to lessening the trees' ability to fight off diseases and pests. Back in 2000 scientists were deeming the salmon a keystone species due to its importance to the inland forests by delivering ocean derived nutrients that could not travel there in any other means. Several individual species of salmon have already gone extinct, the rest are are seriously in peril.
There are many facets to this problem, it took us a couple centuries to make this mess, we may or may not be able to take sufficient remedial action in time to save our own sorry species.
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