Damage from pine wilt disease has surged recently in the Gyeonggi region.

During a press briefing on the "Gyeonggi Province Pine Wilt Disease Emergency Response Plan and Designation of Special Control Zones" held today (the 27th), Gyeonggi Province announced that dead trees affected by the disease totaled 116,655 as of early this month.

This represents a 36% increase compared to last year.

Gyeonggi Province estimates that the extended active period of the Japanese pine sawyer, a vector insect for pine wilt disease, driven by climate change, is one of the main causes of the increased damage.

It was found that the affected dead trees in the province are concentrated in Yangpyeong-gun and Gapyeong-gun, with more than two-thirds of the total distributed across these two areas.

Consequently, Gyeonggi Province requested the Korea Forest Service to designate Yangpyeong-gun as a special control zone last May, followed by Gapyeong-gun in July.

Confirming that the number of dead trees in Gapyeong-gun has exceeded the designation requirement of 30,000, the Korea Forest Service plans to designate Gapyeong-gun as a special control zone on the 29th of this month.

Gapyeong-gun currently has 37,458 dead trees from the disease.

Designation as a special control zone allows for year-round prevention work and speeds up eradication efforts by streamlining procedures, such as omitting the task of manually collecting twigs from logging sites.

In addition, Gyeonggi Province has established and decided to implement four emergency response plans: intensive winter control, region-specific customized control based on the scale of damage, establishment of a wide-area response system, and review of all applicable control methods.

For region-specific customized control, 8 cities and counties with fewer than 1,000 affected trees will completely remove infected trees; 13 cities and counties with between 1,000 and 10,000 affected trees will utilize small-scale clear-cutting and preventive tree injections; and 5 cities and counties with over 10,000 affected trees will undergo species conversion and heavy thinning.

Heavy thinning is a method of selectively cutting down significantly more trees than standard thinning.

Regarding the establishment of a wide-area response system, the province plans to formulate a unified control strategy encompassing all 31 cities and counties by the end of this year to establish spread-prevention lines and measures to protect high-conservation-value pine species. It also aims to share control statuses and jointly respond through a regional council involving the Korea Forest Service, cities and counties, and specialized institutions.

An official from Gyeonggi Province stated, "Starting next year, we will establish a dedicated organization for pine wilt disease to actively and seamlessly carry out prevention work, and by 2028, we plan to build an unused forest biomass resource center in Gapyeong to utilize damaged trees as lumber and wood chips. We ask residents not to transport pine materials to other regions and to report any dead pine trees to the forestry department of their local city or county."

(Photo: Yonhap News)