The year 2008 was an extremely good one for the bark beetle, and therefore a very bad one for nature.
It was also a very bad year for forest owners which however, to quite some degree, is their own fault: for decades now they converted natural forests into spruce monocultures even if the habitat isn't very good for spruce - they tend to catch bark beetle more easily if they are planted in lower lying regions. And of course in monocultures the beetle can spread much more easily.
One region hit very hard is the Bohemian Forest (Böhmerwald) in Mühlviertel; great areas have been widely destroyed by the beetle. This also endangers many rare species of the Bohemian Forest like the common ground pine (Lycopodium clavatum subspecies clavatum - Gewöhnlicher Kolben-Bärlapp):
This one however is growing in a region hardly affected at all of the bark beetle plague.
