Eight-toothed spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus): what the agencies record

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It describes what the named sources say and is not a diagnosis of any tree. Each section names its source, all read on October 9, 2026. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, called CFIA, calls the insect the European spruce bark beetle; the Forestry Commission and the Northern Ireland department call it the eight-toothed spruce bark beetle. The scientific name in all four is Ips typographus. The beetle has a row in insect pests of trees.

Hosts

Forest Research says most species of spruce are susceptible and that Norway spruce is the most affected because it is widespread in continental Europe. It adds that the beetle has also been observed on firs, pines and larches, and that engraver beetles in the genus Ips are destructive pests of conifers, particularly spruce and pine. Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs says the beetle prefers weakened or freshly dead trees of Picea, Pinus and Abies, and that large concentrations can kill healthy trees. Forest Research says there is little practical experience of the beetle on Sitka spruce, a North American species widely grown for timber in the United Kingdom.

Weakened trees and healthy trees

The Forestry Commission calls the beetle mainly a secondary pest that prefers stressed or weakened trees, with windblown, damaged and freshly felled spruce named as examples. It says that under the right environmental conditions numbers can grow enough to attack healthy trees, which it describes as mass attack: large numbers of beetles combined with blue stain fungus carried by the adults overcome the tree's usual defences. Forest Research says healthy trees usually fend the beetles off with insecticidal and fungicidal compounds, and names the blue stain fungus Endoconidiophora polonica as associated with this species. CFIA says the beetle ranks among the most destructive spruce pests in continental Europe, that storms, wars and fires have repeatedly allowed high populations to build up, and that it also attacks healthy trees.

What the sources list as signs

The Northern Ireland department lists crowns that turn discoloured and lighter needles that form mats and often fall, though that sign can be absent in a rapid mass attack. It lists light-brown sawdust frass on the bark at the base of standing trees and beetle entrance holes, first below the crown base and then lower down, including at eye level. Under the bark, it says, galleries run from a nuptial chamber, with one to four regular vertical maternal galleries and wavy larval galleries running across them. The Forestry Commission says the gallery pattern shows in the bark and the wood surface and is unique to this beetle, and that it is often confused with the great spruce bark beetle, Dendroctonus micans.

Life cycle and range

The Forestry Commission says adults hibernate over winter under bark, in logs and in leaf litter, and re-emerge in spring when the temperature rises above 20 degrees Celsius. Females lay eggs along a linear gallery from which larval galleries radiate, widening as the larvae grow. The Northern Ireland department says beetles can fly long distances and that wind can carry them up to 43 km. Forest Research says the beetle is present in most of continental Europe, from Russia and Scandinavia in the north to Italy, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the south and France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the west, and also in China, Japan, North and South Korea and Tajikistan.

The United Kingdom outbreak

Forest Research lists the beetle as present in the United Kingdom and notifiable, and says the first outbreak, a breeding population, was found in a Kent woodland in December 2018. It says live adults have occasionally been trapped at sawmills and ports handling imported wood without any sign of an outbreak in follow-up surveys. The Forestry Commission, on a GOV.UK page updated September 11, 2026, says there is no evidence that the beetle is spreading in England and that later establishments are likely to have come directly from the continent and are not related to the 2018 finding. The Northern Ireland department's page says the beetle is absent from the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, records the Kent finding of late 2018 as the first in the wider environment of the United Kingdom, and calls the United Kingdom a protected zone against its introduction.

England demarcated area, as the notice states it

The Forestry Commission says it used the Official Controls (Plant Health and Genetically Modified Organisms) (England) Regulations 2019 to mark out a demarcated area around the confirmed outbreak sites. Notice 7 (2024), in force from October 29, 2024, covers parts of Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, London, East Sussex, West Sussex, Kent and Essex. Its conditions, as the page lists them, are 14 days' advance notice and written authorisation before felling susceptible material, written agreement for killing spruce over 3 metres, a ban on leaving susceptible material in place without written authorisation, a ban on moving spruce material with bark that originated in the area, and a ban on planting spruce, with exemptions for dwarf varieties and for ornamental, scientific, nursery and Christmas tree uses. The page links the notice for the full terms.

Canada and reporting

CFIA's page, modified July 9, 2019, describes the beetle and lists directives D-02-12, D-01-12 and D-98-08 on wood, firewood and wood packaging. It does not name a regulated area. In Great Britain the Forestry Commission asks for suspected signs, and also spruce woodland showing decline or stress, to be reported through TreeAlert, and in Northern Ireland through the all-Ireland TreeCheck tool. See report a pest in the United Kingdom and Canada. The control methods that the department lists are not summarised here.

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here.

Text on the United Kingdom is adapted from Forest Research and GOV.UK and contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.