• AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Known as “book printers” for the lines they eat into the bark that fan out from a single spine resembling words on a page, these eight-toothed beetles have always been part of the local forest.

    But the tiny insects have been causing outsized devastation to the forests in recent years, with officials grappling to get the pests under control before the spruce population is entirely decimated.

    Two-thirds of the spruce in the region have already been destroyed, said Alexander Ahrenhold from the Lower Saxony state forestry office, and as human-caused climate change makes the region drier and the trees more favorable homes for the beetles’ larvae, forest conservationists are preparing for the worst.

    As the planet warms, longer droughts are becoming more common around the world, with hotter temperatures also drying up moisture in soil and plants.

    Experts say there’s no easy solution, but forest managers work to remove trees that might be susceptible to beetles as early as possible and use pesticides where they’re needed.

    Müller added that forest conservation measures can “sometimes take decades from being implemented to taking effect” and other factors, like storms and drought, and other species, such as game and mice that can also hamper plant growth, are potentially more damaging to the forest in the long run than the bark beetle.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!