Nature conservationists sound the alarm More than 5,000 hectares of spruce trees are damaged in the district
Rhine-Sieg District · Members of the Nature Conservation Advisory Council and forestry authorities are sounding the alarm. During a forest inspection near Bödingen, they showed the dramatic extent of forest destruction in the Rhein-Sieg district.
If you want to see the consequences of climate change, all you have to do at the moment is go for a walk in nature. The condition of the forests in the entire district is distressing after the past years with hot summers and long periods of drought. Spruce trees were the main victims of the drought, which also resulted in the rapid increase of the bark beetle. More than 5,000 hectares of spruce trees in the district have already been damaged, according to Jörg Fillmann of the Rhein-Sieg-Erft Regional Forestry Office. "We are talking about more than two million solid cubic meters of damaged wood. That's huge economic damage," Fillmann said. On Thursday, the members of the district Nature Conservation Advisory Board, chaired by Norbert Möhlenbruch, set out together with Fillmann as well as Hennef forest district manager Gerhard Pohl and Fabian Schreder, operations manager of the Count Nesselrode Forestry Administration, to get an idea of the condition of the forest near Bödingen.
"I believe that the area with damaged spruce trees is even larger," says Möhlenbruch, himself the owner of about 35 hectares of forest. According to Möhlenbruch, the fact that the advisory board, which includes members of nature conservation associations such as BUND and NABU, is inspecting the forest on location has a simple reason: "We had agreed to collect information in the field on special developments concerning land and nature in our district area in addition to the regular meetings," said the advisory board chairman.
Most severely affected area in NRW
During their forest walk, the members learned that the district is the most severely affected area in North Rhine-Westphalia in terms of widespread spruce dieback and that 61 percent of the total 33,514 hectares of forest in the district are privately owned. Fillmann currently lists 15 forestry associations with a total of 4,000 forest owners and 11,000 hectares of managed forest in the district. "The largest forest owner with 550 hectares is the Wahnbachtalsperrenverband," he said. "But there are also forest owners with just 100 square meters of land," Fillmann said. For private forest owners, the Forestry Commission sees itself as a contact, consultant and advisor. "But the forest owner has the responsibility for what happens on the land. We don't take away that power.”
However, legal requirements have to be met, he said. "After clear-cutting, the area should be reforested after two years," said Fillmann, who also believes the emotional aspect of the spruce dieback issue is important. "There's a lot of heart attached to it, because the owners have cared for the trees for years.”
Mixed forests to combat climate change
A forestry administration based in Burg Herrnstein also recorded bitter losses, as operations manager Fabian Schreder confirmed. "We lost about 700 hectares of spruce trees," Schreder said. According to Schreder, in order to counteract climate change, mixed forests are being planted with various tree species such as coastal fir, Douglas fir or Lebanon cedar. This is also the reaction of the Rhein-Sieg-Erft Forestry Administration, which has planted many tree species such as sycamore, beech and elm on a northern slope in the forest near Bödingen since 2020, according to district manager Gerhard Pohl. "In the beginning it was 3,000 plants per hectare, now it's 1,000 because it's getting harder to get the plants," Pohl said.
Of course, nature can also play a role, with a deer "snatching" a newly planted tree. But overall, it's climate change that continues to pose huge challenges for forest managers and owners.
(Orig. text: Ingo Eisner / Translation: Carol Kloeppel)
