For the fourth year since their establishment, the six permanent plot locations in Montana were revisited following beetle flight in 1982.Beetle populations remained low in five of the six areas. Only in the Murr Creek plots did newly attacked trees represent an epidemic beetle population. In the Centennial Valley location, several plots had been logged. Growth and phloem thickness data were collected from Murr Creek, Boulder Creek, and Dunsire Creek in an effort to explain why beetle numbers are not building in these areas as rapidly as we had anticipated. Insufficient data has been collected, as yet, to reach meaningful conclusions.