Lötbodalsskogen in Gnesta has been infested with spruce bark beetles for several years and the municipality has removed the dead trees every year.
After the latest attack, which turned out to be much larger, the municipality decided to fell more than usual.
In total, you see over eight hectares of forest.
- We do not want to come back again and again and break it, but it is better to let the forest heal and hopefully we can stop this, says environmental strategist Bertil Karlsson.
The municipality rejects the criticism
The municipality has been criticized by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation for, among other things, taking healthy spruces, as well as trees such as birch and pine that are not attacked by spruce bark beetles.
According to the municipality, this means, among other things, that you do not want to leave individual trees as they risk falling into a storm.
Therefore, more than just infested trees may have been felled.
- What we have said is that we should take spruce but then when you come with your big forest machine there are things that stand in the way and then maybe we take a pine here, a birch there to get there, says Bertil Karlsson.
Must be able to move freely
Further criticism has been that the municipality has removed all trees that were felled, instead of leaving them.
Among other things, because the bark beetle's natural enemies live in these trees.
- This is a recreational forest and here people want to move in nature in an unhindered way. Lots of rice and dead spruces left would not be popular, says Bertil Karlsson, who also believes that felled trees have been left in places where people move to a lesser extent.