Warm autumn worries Saxony's forest experts

The warm autumn is causing concern among Saxon forestry experts with regard to the bark beetle population. There is a high risk that the pests will survive the winter unscathed and infest new trees in the coming year, the state enterprise Saxony Forest announced on Monday. Therefore, bark beetle trees would also have to be felled and removed from the forest in the fall and winter.

According to Sachsenforst, bark beetle numbers in the Free State remain at an extremely high level. Although the amounts of damage in the Free State probably continued to decline this year, a slackening in countermeasures could have dramatic consequences, it said. "We are still in the midst of a historic, unprecedented bark beetle disaster. In recent years, ever larger parts of Saxony's spruce forests in particular have fallen victim to it," said Forestry Minister Wolfram Günther (Greens).