All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

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To think that something the size of a grain of rice can bring down entire forests (3.9 million acres in 2007, to be exact), escapes comprehension … until you walk in one of those forests, scrape some tree bark, and hold the pine beetle carefully between your fingertips.

It's not a foreign invader from a far-off land, so don't go blaming China or India. And it hasn't been dropped into our forests maliciously, so you don't have to call homeland security just yet. But it is deadly. The right combination of severe droughts over the past decade, warmer winters without serious cold snaps (prolonged extreme cold can kill the bugs) and increased density of some of our forests has left millions (yes millions) of trees choking – thanks to the tiny teeth of these beetles.

These little bugs crawl under the bark and start to feed on the phloem (the rings that carry the nutrients of a tree for those who were throwing paper airplanes in biology class). This month they feed and multiply and leap from tree to tree and they are having the time of their lives.

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Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

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There are some ingredients which can predict whether or not a story will capture our collective attention for longer than average. This story, which pits religious practice versus child abuse, includes several; a society historically filled with secrets that whose members are visibly different from us in their dress and behavior, who have been reclusive and keep secrets partly to avoid the inevitable scrutiny and persecution that comes with disclosure of their practices, involves a layer of forbidden sex, and most perhaps most importantly, that last ingredient involves children.

For the previous week, the media sipped and sucked details through a small straw. We learned about the raid, from law enforcement, the logistics, from child protective services and the prospect of a legal quagmire unlike any that Texas had seen. We wondered how we'd ever get the viewpoint of those affected, how we'd gain access to a 1,500-acre ranch in any meaningful way other than a helicopter ride over the property?

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