City forest Lübeck

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The city of Lubeck is the municipal forestry companies , which the forest areas of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck managed and farmed. The Lübeck forests became known for the concept of " natural forest use ".

Forest history

Witthauerstein for the Lübeck forester Witthauer in Lauerholz

The Hanseatic City of Lübeck has had an urban forest that has grown over centuries since 1163 , which today covers an area of ​​around 4,600 hectares . It lies partly in the Lübeck city area, but partly also in the districts of the Duchy of Lauenburg and Northwest Mecklenburg . In addition to the forest in communal ownership (historically: Kämmereiforst ), the city's forest administration has been responsible for the forest ownership of the municipal public-law foundations Heiligen-Geist-Hospital , Westerauer Stiftung and St. Johannis-Jungfrauen-Kloster (historically: Klosterforst , see also Forsthaus Waldhusen ) with approx. 625 hectares.

When Lübeck lost its exclaves due to the Greater Hamburg Act in 1937 , the forest areas were excluded. In particular, the Ritzerau forest with 650 hectares, which has been in Lübeck's possession since 1465, and the Behlendorf forest (450 hectares) remained municipal property. The Hevenbruch in the Ritzerau Forest has not been managed since 1994 and is now a nature reserve .

The Schattin monastery forest area to the east of the Wakenitz , with the Kammerbruch, was located after 1945 in the territory of the Soviet occupation zone or the GDR , soon after the end of the war it lost part of its oak stock due to reparations and was not managed as foreign property for a long time. At the end of the 1950s, the plan came up to assign it to the forest property of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg . Fiduciary management by the regional church took place from 1961. After 1970, the tightened border regime made any management more difficult; the Schattiner forestry office was pulled empty and broken off. Only after reunification did the area come under Lübeck administration again in 1991. Today the Schattiner surcharge serves as an uncultivated reference area and the jungle of tomorrow .

Duration

As early as the 19th century, an excellent stock of beech and oak was highlighted as well as the fact that the free city of Lübeck has had exemplary forest management in its combing and monastery forests for a long number of years, and with careful consideration for the wear and tear of the forests the offspring takes care .

Today the forests consist of around 20 percent coniferous forests and around 80 percent of deciduous (mixed) forests. Beeches take up the largest area with around 35 percent, followed by around 25 percent oak. The municipal forest office employs 25 people (2009). Lauerholz is the largest single forest in the Lübeck city area with an area of ​​960 hectares .

concept

From 1994 onwards, Lutz Fähser, as chief forestry director in the Lübeck municipal forest, implemented his ideas of “natural forest use” in the forest management concept. The areas met the criteria of Naturland and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) even before these certifications were issued. Today the engineer Knut Sturm is continuing the project.

The citizens of Lübeck commissioned the city's own forestry office with a unanimous resolution to implement this concept. The forest is therefore under "process protection" and means total protection of an area from human interference. The forestry process protection concept means that management is carried out in such a way that natural processes in the forests are largely permitted or are also used in the sense of economic goals (e.g. natural seeding, selection through natural competition).

Three central ideas determine the Lübeck concept:

  1. The commercial forests should develop into the low-risk and productive form of the natural forest community (closeness to nature)
  2. The performance requirements for the forest must not exceed the natural capacity (ecological yield level)
  3. The economic use is based on the principle of minimal intervention and the principle of caution (minimization)

The basic idea is the extensive adaptation of the management to the natural processes and the minimization of disruptive interventions. Some large cities in Germany have adopted this concept in their forests: Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Saarbrücken, Wiesbaden, Hanover and Göttingen. This means that their wood products are certified according to “Naturland” and FSC. The Natural Forest Academy , which was founded there in 2016, was also brought to Lübeck for the scientific processing of the Lübeck forests . The chairman of the Academy's scientific advisory board is the current head of the city forest, Knut Sturm.

reception

Prominent conservationists visit the project again and again. In 2009, the BfN President Beate Jessel and the sub-department head in the Ministry of the Environment (BMU) Elsa Nickel visited the Lübeck city forest to find out about the concept of “natural forest use”.

The Lübeck concept was and is supported by large environmental associations such as Greenpeace , BUND / Friends of the Earth and Robin Wood. It has received awards from the European paper industry (1996) and the Federal Environment Ministry (1998), among others .

Internationally, too, the Lübeck concept is considered exemplary in terms of the resolutions of Rio de Janeiro 1992. The head of the urban forest has been invited to numerous countries since 1994 to give presentations and give guidance (such as Russia, China, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Chile and Spain). Several thousand forest specialists have visited Lübeck since then. Numerous scientific papers emerged from these encounters.

literature

  • Gerhard Schneider: The Lübeck Forests. In: Der Wagen 1956, pp. 81–87

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Fred Ruchhöft: Forestry of the Eastern Evangelical Churches between 1945 and 1991. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2012 ISBN 978-3-8482-0577-6 , pp. 143f
  2. ^ The Schattiner surcharge , accessed on October 11, 2014; Hans Rathje Reimers; Will the "Waldort" Schattin become a real jungle? , In: Lübeckische sheets 2012, S. 264f ( Digitalisat ( Memento of 17 October 2014 Internet Archive ) (archive version))
  3. ^ Ottomar Victor Leo: Forest statistics over Germany and Austria-Hungary. Berlin: Julius Springer 1874, p. 131
  4. ^ Ernst Wilhelm Maron: Forest statistics of all forests in Germany including Prussia. Berlin: Julius Springer 1862, p. 182
  5. ↑ http://www.luebeck.de/bewohner/umwelt_gesundheit/stadtwald/lösungen/index.html

Web links

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