Threats
The species is mainly threatened by loss, fragmentation and decline in health of oak and beech forest habitats due to logging, deforestation and diseases. In practice, the silvicultural system has clear-cutting in oak and in places of beech forests too; as a result, bare lands and even-aged forests are created while old growth forests are in decline (Trajkov et al. 2016, pers. obs.), posing a major threat to maintenance of a stable population. In North Macedonia, ca. 1% of forests are logged annually (Kolevska et al. 2017, State Statistics Office 2018), and illegal logging is considerably high, with additional 30% to legal wood extraction. Therefore, based on forest management and the effects of habitat destruction, the quality of the appropriate habitat for the species is continuously reducing, at the end the mycorrhizal network and symbiosis is usually destroyed which is the reason for population decline of this ectomycorrhizal species. Albeit the species is found in national parks, forest in NPs is also managed, only with restriction in regard to the logging system (Trajkov et al. 2016).
Furthermore, it is threatened by planting of nonnative species instead of oak species in the lower oak belt (Kolevska et al. 2017).
Diseases of the ectomycorrhizal partners Quercus spp. and Fagus sylvatica, with varying degrees of intensity, have been reported (DPRS 2019). Diseases of oakstands are primarily caused by Euproctis chrysorrhoe L., Lymantria dispar L. and species of the family Tortricidae while on beech trees by Rhynchaenus fagi L. (DPRS 2019).
Another threat is the destruction of fruit bodies while foraging edible species.
