PARIS – France’s agriculture ministry plans to subsidise tree felling and ease regulations on biomass burning as part of a push to stop the spread of bark beetle, a voracious pest decimating French forests whose spread has been boosted by global warming. Since 2018, successive droughts and high temperatures in northeast France have made trees more vulnerable to beetle attacks, sparking massive mortality of spruce and fir, with an estimated 110,000 of the 520,000 hectares of forest in that region infested, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. To contain the insects’ spread, France will finance preventive felling of trees and debarking equipment, make it easier to burn infested wood for biomass, and help sell timber that has been infested but is still usable, the ministry said.