Magical Ecology. LPS Typographus Charm.

On our hikes in the Apuseni Mountains, in the Padiș area, we often passed these black objects floating in the forest. We would approach them circumspectly, circling around them. Animal feeders? Birds? Curiosity, wonder and a sense that someone was watching us from a distance.
Stunned, we walked on. In 2022, we returned, as we do every year, to the Glăvoi clearing. That place is magical for many of us. Even though we already know the mountain trails, we follow them again. This time we noticed something different. The dry spruce trees with the fallen bark were literally dripping on the ground. I picked up a large piece of bark with the trail marker painted on it. Let’s take it as a souvenir, I said.
Bark and trail marker together—let’s take it home. We’ll keep this round yellow and white egg-eye sign, a symbol of leisure in nature, in a romantic fantasy about nature admirers seeking bliss by walking. We cheerfully greet each other when we meet on the trail; we are of the same assemblage as the spruces; we will disappear from this landscape with the trail and the forest. The black objects are there, next to the dried spruce trees. They were also there a few years ago, but now they seem to be signs of a slow, fatal disease. That something that killed the spruce has something to do with the feeders. The forest is disappearing, and they’re becoming more obvious.
Back in the internet-linked world at the foot of the mountain, I search for links. Black objects, forest, feeders, dried spruce trees, Apuseni Mountains, Apuseni Mountains disaster appears, Apuseni Nature Park in danger of disappearing, and Apuseni Nature Park in danger of becoming history. Thousands of hectares of forest wiped out by a few-millimeter insect—it’s a trap.
Pheromone to control the bark beetle population, LPS Typographus. Ineffective for global warming, a veritable dream catcher for humans. Bad dreams about the end of the world. Ours. Black charm, green magic, bad typograph bugs, good sap dried up, wet world gone.
People hope nature will rebalance.
Hope that it will get better. That it won’t disappear. That it will heal from global warming. That we will be healed.

Outbreaks of spruce bark beetle Ips typographus larvae occur in both logged and protected forests, but although long known, the management and control of this insect is a controversial topic due to the diverse nature of forests and their protected status. Pheromone trapping is an environmentally friendly intervention method. The “Apuseni Natural Park” is a protected area of national interest and has a total area of 75,784 ha. By 2022, thousands of hectares of spruce forest in the Apuseni National Park in Cluj and Bihor counties will have dried up. The infestation has been known since 2010, when attempts were made to remove infested trees and prevent infestation using pheromone traps. These methods have not been effective, the conclusion being that due to global warming the
trees can no longer defend themselves and the number of insects has multiplied at an accelerated rate, and the enormous surface area of the disaster area is beyond the powers of human intervention.

Exhibitions

The focus now is on living! Timișoara Edition, Riverside Pavilion in Timișoara Children’s Park 2023

Media Art Festival Arad (MAFA IX Wunderkammer) Museum Complex Arad 2022.