Forest heritage

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Forest heritage is a term coined by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMEL) as part of the German campaign for the International Year of Forests 2011. The International Year of Forests was intended to draw attention worldwide to the great importance of sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of forests for the benefit of present and future generations. In Germany, the campaigns were based on the extraordinary universal value of the UNESCO World Heritage Site under the motto "Discover our forest heritage!"

Forests as part of historical and cultural identity

In Germany the forest was - far beyond the aspect of the raw material supplier - an inseparable part and companion of earlier generations. The forest is a silent witness and keeper of the legacies of bygone peoples and generations: places of worship , settlements, defensive structures, etc. from all ages have outlasted the times as so-called ground monuments and bear witness to an eventful past.

From an economic point of view, wood production is as important today as it used to be: Wood is the most important domestic raw material. It is renewable, environmentally friendly and versatile. Germany is poor in natural resources. The forest is a natural source of raw materials that is in principle permanently available with sustainable management and constant environmental conditions.

Forest as part of the cultural landscape

In Germany, the forest is an essential element in the cultural landscape, also in the typical regional forest-field distribution. Germany is naturally a “woodland”. Today around 31 percent of the country's area is forest. The forestry is the most important in terms of area land use form after agriculture.

At the beginning of modern times, the forests in Germany were pushed back to far less than today's forest area and were heavily overused. Against the background of the historical development of the forest, the high population density and the anthropogenic environmental change, there have long been no completely natural forest ecosystems in Germany that are not influenced by humans (so-called primary forests). The majority (approx. 99 percent) of the forests in Germany are assigned to the category "semi-natural" according to the MCPFE classification for closeness to nature. Today's forests in Germany are the result of human influence and thus the result of “cultural creation”.

This will continue to be the case in the future for most of the German forest area, even if forestry has been working increasingly according to methods of near-natural forest management for around three decades. A core element is the conversion of pure conifer stands to local deciduous trees or mixed deciduous trees. In the future, native tree species should be used more often when new forests are founded. With 39 percent, a considerable proportion of deciduous and mixed forest has now been achieved in Germany.

But the renunciation of use is also an expression of what is culturally and socially desired: This applies on a small scale to leaving habitat trees , islands of old trees and dead wood and setting up useless forest areas in commercial forests as well as setting up large-scale forest protection areas, for example in our national parks.

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO on 20 June in Paris decided to include the "Ancient Beech Forests of Germany" in the list of world heritage. This means that selected forest areas in five protected areas are recognized nationwide as World Natural Heritage: the Jasmund National Park and the Serrahn in the Müritz National Park in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Grumsin in the UNESCO Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve in Brandenburg , the Hainich National Park in Thuringia and the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park in Hessen .

For the International Year of Forests, the Forstbetrieb Stiftungsforsten Haina has set up a 1.5-kilometer "Forest Heritage Trail".

literature

  • K. Reiter, A. Doerpinghaus: The National Natural Heritage - Definition, Balance, Outlook. NuL 2015, pp. 98-104

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ International Year of Forests 2011 website of the Protection Association of German Forests , accessed on September 28, 2019
  2. ↑ RESOLUTION 61/193 International Year of Forests 2011 (PDF; 557 kB). Adopted at the 83rd United Nations Plenary Session on December 20, 2006
  3. ↑ International Year of Forests 2011 Website of the Botanical Garden of the University of Mainz, March 21, 2011
  4. ↑ UNESCO: German beech forests are world natural heritage Joint press release with the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), June 25, 2011
  5. ↑ Forest Heritage Trail in Haina Website accessed on September 28, 2019