Czech forest owners face 40 billion crowns ($1.70 billion) of damage this year from an escalating spread of bark beetle that are killing the central European country’s most common conifer trees.  While native to conifer forests, bark beetle has benefited from the dry and hot summer that experts associate with climate change, which has weakened the trees’ natural defences, and helped spawn an infestation of the insect, an industry think-tank said on Monday.  The Czech Republic is one of the worst-affected countries but the spread ravaging soft timber, popular for ...