Ten percent more trees attacked by bark beetles in Switzerland in 2023
Published: Wednesday, Apr 17th 2024, 13:20
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Bark beetles have spread further in Swiss forests in 2023. The total volume of infested spruce wood has increased by ten percent, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) reported on Wednesday.
Over 700,000 cubic meters of spruce wood were infested by bark beetles. This is roughly equivalent to the wood needed to build 14,000 wooden houses.
Due to the infestation, forestry managers also had to cut down more infested spruce trees than in the previous year. This development hit the cantons of Vaud, Solothurn and Neuchâtel particularly hard. In the canton of Vaud, the so-called summer forced utilization increased by 85 percent, in the canton of Solothurn by 88 percent and in Neuchâtel by as much as 138 percent. Across Switzerland as a whole, around eight percent more spruce trees had to be forcibly felled in the summer of 2023 than in the previous year.
9500 beetle nests in Switzerland
According to WSL, the number of beetle nests reported by the forestry services, the so-called incidental foci, has also risen sharply: They rose by around 1500 to just under 9500 nests across Switzerland.
This increase is due to the high average temperatures in 2023, wrote Waldschutz Schweiz, the WSL's specialist and advisory center for forest health. The beetles were thus offered good development conditions over longer distances.
In February and March in particular, temperatures were often well above average, which allowed the beetles to swarm out early.
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