Do your balsam firs look a bit under the weather?

I noticed a few dead balsam firs on our property the other day.  A few days later I noticed that other balsam’s on our property had dead needles at the tip of some branches. I called a forester with the DNR and found out the reason for the brown/dead needles is spruce budworm.  The link below has more information on this insect, but a few other items I learned from the forester was that proactively cutting down infected trees does not improve the prospect of other trees.  The trees can survive the infestation, but the more of the crown that is affected, the worse the chance of survival is for a tree.  On a slightly bright note, the insect cycle tends to run in a ~10 year cycle and northern Wisconsin is in year 8 or 9.

https://forestrynews.blogs.govdelivery.com/2020/06/05/spruce-budworm-defoliation-showing-up-2/