SIGUATEPEQUE, Honduras -- Over the past three years, Honduras has lost a quarter of its pine forests to a plague of bark-munching beetles.
▲圖／翻攝自中國郵報
Now though, after a long campaign that saw soldiers wielding chainsaws to contain the bug invasion, a little green is growing back.
In mountains north of the capital that were stripped bare, trees replanted by students from the National University's forest sciences department are growing.
The reforestation work started four months ago. The professor leading the students, Oscar Leveron, explained it will be a slow healing of the landscape: It takes 25-30 years for the trees to mature to the heights of the ones lost.
The infestation of the southern pine beetle, whose scientific name is Dendroctonus frontalis, was first detected in 2013.
Its march blighted bigger and bigger swaths of woodland until, a year ago, the exponential spread prompted President Juan Orlando Hernandez to declare a "forest emergency."
The pest has delivered what is considered one of the worst ecological disasters to befall the Central American country.
Some experts attributed the massive invasion to a prolonged drought brought on by the El Nino phenomenon felt across the region.
Satellite images show a total 509,000 hectares have been destroyed by the insect since 2013. The emergency decree allowed authorities to set up task forces of up to 3,500 people deployed in mountains across the country under the supervision of the Forestry Conservation Institute.
Wielding chain saws, their mission was to cut down infected trees and healthy ones in a close radius, to prevent the beetles jumping onto new hosts.
The forestry students joined soldiers in chopping down vast areas of the 5,000 hectares of pine forest owned by the university.
Traps made of rows of black funnels and pungent resin were hung from shrubs to attract and catch the bugs.
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