The beetle is more terrible than foot-and-mouth disease

Article by Liliya Khlystun, Published in «Sovetskaya Byelorussia» (The Soviet Byelorussia) Newspaper, #370,
December 20, 2001

Bark beetle is a threat to the Belovezhskaya Pushcha

The National park «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» is looking solemn and silent while a New Year is coming. I look to mighty spruce trees covered by snow caps and words of Grigory Kravchuk, the economist of the National park, which are hard to believe: «When the first warm days come, a part of these trees will be lost. Do not trust a green top. Pay attention to the bark, which already begins to fall down. In April such trees will simply be dead …»

The Belovezhskaya Pushcha, included on the List of the World Heritage of Mankind and granted the status of the Biosphere Reserve 10 years ago by decision of the UNESCO, got into troubles. A small but very artful beetle — the bark beetle — bosses here. Object for its attack are spruce trees weakened by influence of adverse environmental factors. This is not a new pest in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Old residents do remember well the invasion of this bug in 1960 resulting large-scale land drainage. It was because the downturn of subsoil waters affected the root system of trees. Last time the bark beetle mass appeared unexpectedly five years ago. As a result, the National Park lost about 10 quarters of spruce forests and 231 thousand cubic meters of the wood died off.

Scientists explain the present pick of activity of the harmful insect by increasing solar activity and by the drought of 2000. These factors provoked intensive duplication of the bug. This happened not only in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The regions of Moscow, Bryansk and Smolensk, as well as Poland suffered too. After sufficiently watching trees attributed by yellowed needles and a lack of bark, I perceive absolutely seriously the truth of this slogan of any joker in the Internet: «The bug is more terrible than the foot-and-mouth disease».

The saddest fact is that it is yet impossible to rescue a spruce tree after the bark beetle penetrated under the bark. The best way, as foresters assert, is to cut it down as soon as possible and to take it out of the forest before the pest could attack further trees.

However, as employees of the park admit, they missed the opportunity at this critical moment because they did not remove the infected trees in time.

The result must be faced. The quantity of spruce trees infected by bark beetle now is ten times higher than during the spring period. As the general director of «Belovezhskaya Pushcha» National Park, Mr. Nickolai Bambiza stated that nowadays centers of bark beetle infection are registered on an area of 600 hectares. To clear them employees of the National Park had even to postpone sanitary cuttings. Nevertheless only about 47 thousand cubic meters of infected wood were cut down till now. Regarding wind-fallen trees, probably, woodcutters have to forget them in general for some time though it is also a considerable problem because on average approximately 240 thousand cubic meters of the wood is dying annually in the Pushcha.

In order to restore the forest considerable financial means are necessary in order to create forest nurseries and for procurement of seeds. Here state assistance is needed. Now the Park does require finances, otherwise the scale of the disaster may improve and grow out into a catastrophe by next year. This situation, by the way, is typical for all Belarusian forest areas. Yakov Marchenko, the Director of the State Committee on Forest Protection (and responsible for Monitoring «Belleszashchità») predicts an intensification of the cutting of dead spruce trees from 1.5 million cubic meters to 2.5 or 3 millions.

As they learned from their mistakes made last year, the employees of the park prepare measures by time of the awakening of bark beetle during spring. They plan to co-operate with Polish foresters which meet the same complications. Since cardinal measures against this bug have not yet been found, employees of the reserve are going to adopt all known methods: they will set up traps, they will put down special «trap» trees, and, certainly, they will fell infected spruce trees. Belarusian scientists recently made a good proposition for the foresters. They produced a domestic mode of preparation for protection against bark beetle, which is much cheaper compared with methods based on imported chemicals.

But in general, as it seems to me, we have to rescue the Pushcha all together. This is one of those sites in the country which are pleasant for a personal visit, a place which is no shame to show around to our guests. Approximately 60,000 tourists have visited the Belovezhskaya Pushcha during last year only. About 10,000 of them were foreigners. It is necessary to make every step to let our next generations witness the famous forest in the way we can.