Centennial summer and rough drought have forest owners looking anxiously at their forest stands again, primarily spruce trees. Bark beetle density has been rising steadily since 2015, as forestry director michael kreppel of the AELF bamberg explains. During a site visit in the spruce forest near oberehrenbach he pointed out the problem. Kreppel buried in the round forstamtsrat matthias jessen representing the neunkirchen forest district, matthias kraft from the forest farmers association, forstamtsanwarter christoph bauer and forstreferendar matthias strack. Otto salb first pointed out two places in his forest where the infestation by the bark beetle on apparently coarse, intact spruce trees was clearly visible on closer inspection.
Warning threshold for borkenkafer exceeded
In the so-called "monitor traps, as in oesdorf, the warning threshold of over 1000 kafer per week has already been exceeded several times this year, but infested spruce trees have hardly been found so far. "This has changed, at the moment there are some kaferfichten to be found", says forestry officer jessen. He only controls the communal forests where he is in charge of the management. With about 5000 hectares of forest in the district, it would be impossible for him to inspect all spruce forests every four weeks, as required by law.
