One man's bark is another man's food

Spruce bark is the spruce bark beetle's food
It will not have gone unnoticed that the inner bark of the spruce is the favorite food for the spruce bark beetle, which gnaws on passages, mating chambers and mother passages, where the larvae eat on until it is time to pupate and later become a beetle that after a few weeks gnaws out into the open to find new spruces to munch on, multiply in and overwinter in, if they do not overwinter in the ground next door.

For a long time, the Swedish Forest Agency recommended winter felling and removal of spruce bark beetle-damaged trees from the forest. Naturarvet opposed such a regulation in the nature reserve decision for Eklidens nature reserve, when it was extended with Skarnhålans old-growth forestacquired by Naturarvet in 2018. We argued, among other things, that such a regulation lacked scientific basis. It only took a few years for research to show that winter felling with thinning was an ineffective method that at worst counteracted damage control.

The spruce bark beetle is the food of other species
The spruce bark beetle is not alone in wanting to eat its fill and multiply in the forest. There are other beetles, stilt flies and woodpeckers, for example, which in turn munch on spruce bark beetles. The research concluded that winter felling with removal of damaged trees was not only ineffective against spruce bark beetle as it stays in the bark that falls off during felling. It also disadvantaged the 'natural enemies', which overwinter further into the wood of the trees and are therefore transported out of the forest.

Naturarvet sees the spruce bark beetle as a species equal to other species in the natural ecosystem of the old-growth forest. In our forests, we can neither allow inappropriate 'control methods', which in fact favour the spruce bark beetle and disadvantage other species, nor control the species by other means. Not letting nature take its course can lead to unforeseen consequences.