Elephants are 'hung gods' that devastate pine forests in Honduras

A very small type of beetle that is "threatening" threatens pine forests in Honduras.

La Prensa daily newspaper of Honduras on May 31 said, since last summer so far, this country of Central America has lost more than 600,000 hectares of pine forest because of the tragedy of elephants.

Curculionidae , also known as Elephant Whistle , is a family of beetles or animals with real taps . This beetle family was officially established by scientists in 1998, being the largest animal family with more than 40,000 species described at the time. Currently it is still the largest beetle family. Since the summer of 2014, prolonged dry weather has created conditions for the beetle (each 3mm size only) to proliferate and move into "clouds ", crossing far distances from this forest to another forest.

An elephant bug is eating leaves.(Source: Flickr.com).

In 2014, elephants caused epidemics to devastate 15,000 hectares of Honduras' pine forest, but by 2015, the figure had grown exponentially and beyond the control of the forest protection agency.

According to Honduran Forest Protection statistics, the disease has so far destroyed more than 700,000 hectares of pine forest and has spread to 16/18 Honduras states - or all localities with pine forests. In January, the government of Honduras had to issue an urgent environmental order within a year to focus all its financial and physical resources on the epidemic, but so far has not changed.

The disease has now spread to La Tigra forest, only 15km from the capital Tegucigalpa. The Forest Protection Institute had to mobilize 2,500 workers to participate in epidemic removal and biological treatment campaigns to localize the epidemic. With an area of ​​112,492 km ² , Honduras has about 5 million ha of forest, of which 1.9 million ha is pine forest.