The current challenge for European forestry is the spruce bark beetle, the rate of spread of which is reaching alarming proportions, threatening both commercial forests and state-designated protected forest areas indiscriminately. Given Germany's prominence, its misfortune has been the most widely publicised – in the north of Germany, bark beetles have multiplied on a massive scale, and their population, in the absence of timely control measures, has exploded to an uncontrollable extent, creating an entirely new landscape: a grim brown (where the beetle is still active) and grey (where the trees have already died).

To understand the scale of the epidemic visually, search for "spruce bark beetle Germany" in an internet search engine. We are currently pinning our hopes on the epidemic not spreading to Bavaria and subsequently to Austria, while in the Czech Republic we can only count the losses, as Mother Nature will soon have sorted everything out there.