D6

By BARRY HATTON
The Associated Press

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CASTINCAL, Portugal - Manuel Coimbra watches in silence, his hands on his hips, as a lumberjack saws down one of his pine trees to stop a killer bug which experts say could wipe out large belts of European woodland.

The dense forests that blanket the hillsides of this rural area of central Portugal are the latest international conquest for the pest which has caused ecological catastrophes in East Asia. Thousands of trees here are already dead, according to locals.

"It makes me sad," Coimbra says, leaning against a jeep on a shady dirt road as experts bag shavings from the felled tree for testing at a local lab.

"Future generations probably won't know what we're talking about when we tell them about pine forests. We'd better start taking some photographs to show them," said Coimbra, a soft-spoken middle-aged man who owns about eight hectares of local pine forest.

His land is on the front line of Europe's attempt to check the spread of pine wilt disease, which is running out of control in this southwestern corner of the continent and is a menace for pine forests across the borderless European Union, from Scandinavia to Italy and Greece.

Two species of pine are susceptible - maritime pine, which accounts for almost one-quarter of Portugal's forest, and Scots pine, the most widespread pine species in Europe which is frequently used for Christmas trees.

The concerns are not just environmental. Europe is the world's largest importer and exporter of forest products which account for more than three per cent of global commodity trade with an annual turnover exceeding $200 billion, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The European Commission has imposed tight restrictions on the export of Portuguese pine, which must be disinfected and given a clean bill of health before leaving the country.

But Roddie Burgess, the head of the Plant Health Service for the British government's Forestry Commission who has been studying the disease for more than 20 years, fears the bug's spread across Portugal is a bad omen.

"Given the scale of the problem ... it's going to be very difficult to get on top of this," Burgess said by telephone from Edinburgh, Scotland. "If I was in Spain just now I'd be extremely worried."

The bug, called a nematode, is a worm invisible to the naked eye which swarms through a pine tree's innards and kills it within weeks by choking off the flow of sap. It gets around by hitching a lift in the respiratory system of a flying beetle which looks a bit like a cockroach.

The beetle is believed to have arrived in Portugal in a ship's cargo from East Asia, where in the 1970s the nematode almost wiped out Japan's vast pine forests. The following decade major outbreaks were recorded in the pine forests of China, Taiwan and Korea.

Pine wilt disease is endemic to North America. However, losses there are not widespread, in large part due to different climatic conditions where pine is found. The nematode is fonder of the warm conditions found in southern Europe. Cooler countries to the north are in less peril, though trade restrictions are likely if it is detected there.

Coimbra's felled tree bore the telltale signs of infection by the deadly invader: colour drained from the needles which turned brown and then dropped off, leaving the bare stick of a doomed tree.

The nematode was first detected in the Setubal region south of Lisbon in 1999. Some 340,000 trees died there in just two years. Experts suspect the beetle arrived in wooden crates or pallets at a nearby port after Portugal rolled down its flag in Macau and handed the territory back to Chinese rule that year.

Despite official efforts to halt its spread, including the felling of pines over 128,000 hectares to create a containment belt three kilometres wide and more than 100 kilometres long, the nematode has marched on.

The Agriculture Ministry in Lisbon did not reply to requests to view the measures being taken.

Manuel Mota, an expert at Portugal's University of Evora and co-author of a recent book called Pine Wilt Disease: A Worldwide Threat to Forest Ecosystems, says the bug is a fearsome enemy.

"The disease is devastating," Mota said. "In scientific circles we say, 'Nematodes are forever.' You're not going to be able to eradicate it. It's impossible."

British Columbia forests have faced similar devastation due to the scourge of the mountain pine beetle.