📋 Tender Overview
The Forestry Inspectorate of the Inspectorate for Agriculture, Forestry, Hunting and Fisheries (IRSKGLR) notices an increased prevalence of bark beetles on spruce trees in forests and in urban environments with the onset of higher temperatures and drought. The inspection calls on owners to regularly monitor the condition of spruce trees and, in case of suspicion of spruce infestation by bark beetles in an urban environment, immediately cut them down and take measures.
The high summer temperatures that we are currently witnessing and the drought affect the increased ability of bark beetles to spread, but at the same time, together with the drought, they reduce the trees' natural ability to defend themselves against attack.
Bark borers pose a serious threat to the health of coniferous forests and individual trees, as they can quickly destroy conifers and cause significant economic damage. Untimely sanitary cutting and execution of suppressive works enables the spread of bark beetles, which results in the multiplication of bark beetles. Just a few adult beetles of the eight-toothed spruce beetle ( Ips typhographus ) or six-toothed spruce beetle ( Pityogenes chalcographus ) weaken the tree and cause its death. In favorable weather conditions, adult spruce bark beetles are capable of flying several kilometers and burrowing into healthy conifer trees, thus causing large-scale allocated damage, possibly even in a nearby forest. With their way of life, bark beetles cause the death of the tree, which consequently dries out, becomes brittle, brittle and statically unstable, thus directly endangering people's lives and endangering their property, especially when the tree and its parts are affected by external forces such as wind, snow and sleet.
The Forestry Inspectorate therefore urges owners of spruce trees in urban areas to regularly observe their trees and, in the event of any sign of attack by bark beetles, immediately carry out sanitary felling and suppressive measures to prevent the spread of bark beetles. Cutting down trees in an urban environment is a particularly demanding and dangerous task, so it should be entrusted to qualified and verified contractors.
How to recognize the summer bark beetle attack on Norway spruce:
change in the color of the needles and their massive shedding (browning),
tiny round holes on the bark,
worm on the bark and root neck and on the attached growth around the trunk of the attacked tree,
the appearance of resin dripping down the trunk,
shedding of the bark, on which the burrows of bark beetles are visible,
the tree dries up.
Supervision in the urban environment is carried out by forestry inspectors of the IRSKGLR. Owners who are found to have coniferous trees on their property infested with bark beetles will be issued a decision to cut down the infested trees during the inspection process.
