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CLAUSTHAL-ZELLERFELD, Germany (AP) — Nestled in the spruce trees in the Harz mountains of northern Germany is a bark-eating pest not much bigger than a sesame seed.

Known as “book printers” for the lines they eat into the bark that fan out from a single spine resembling words on a page, these eight-toothed beetles have always been part of the local forest. Officials expect the bugs to typically kill a few spruces each summer as they find suitable trees to lay their eggs — they burrow into the tree’s cambium, or growing layer, hampering it from getting the nutrients it needs to survive.

But the tiny insects have been causing outsized devastation to the forests in recent years, with officials grappling to get the pests under control before the spruce population is entirely decimated. Two-thirds of the spruce in the region have already been destroyed, said Alexander Ahrenhold from the Lower Saxony state forestry office, and as human-caused climate change makes the region drier and the trees more favorable homes for the beetles’ larvae, forest conservationists are preparing for the worst.