KEYSTONE — State Rep. Christine Scanlan is headed to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with members of Congress and the U.S. Forest Service about getting more help to battle the state’s bark beetle epidemic.

The Democrat from Dillon is vice chairwoman of the state interim committee on wildfires. Forest and community officials fear the huge swaths of trees killed by the beetles pose a big wildfire risk.

The beetles, which burrow under the trees’ bark, have already killed about 1.5 million acres of lodgepole pines in the mountains in central Colorado. The infestation has moved to lower elevations where it threatens ponderosa pine forests, too.