Wolf-Eberhard Barth

Wolf-Eberhard Barth (* 1941 in Johannisburg , East Prussia ) is a German forest officer , cynologist and conservationist . He is considered a pioneer of nature conservation within the Lower Saxony state forest administration and was the first director of the Harz National Park from 1994 to 2004 . He is also known for his books Nature Conservation - The Feasible , a standard work on practical nature conservation, and Monkey Theater. Evolution does not release us from our "psychotope" .

Live and act

Wolf-Eberhard Barth was born in 1941 as the son of army forest officer Matthias Barth and his wife Ingeborg in a forester's house in Johannisburg in Masuria . His father was a district forester in Lissuhnen near Arys at this time . At the end of the Second World War , his mother fled with him and his sister Barbara in 1944, initially to her sister's estate in Tirschtiegel . In January 1945, she and her children managed to flee to their parents in a horse-drawn carriage trek to Goslar . Her husband died in July 1945 in a Soviet prisoner of war. Wolf-Eberhard Barth grew up in Goslar from then on. After graduating from the Ratsgymnasium , he studied forest sciences at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the ETH Zurich . During his clerkship in the Lower Saxony State Forestry Administration, he was in 1969 in Göttingen with the dissertation The Hanoverian dog as an example the development of a German hunting dog doctorate . After his acceptance into the civil service, Barth became an assistant at the Lower Saxony forest work school in Münchehof , where he introduced the subject "Construction of recreational facilities and forest playgrounds". In 1974 he was appointed head of the Oderhaus Forestry Office in the Harz region.

As Barth Nachsuche beings even from animal welfare point of view panelist hunt ethically is very important, it was found in the deer forest office almost automatically that he was in practice a committed leader of the Hannover welding dogs to track down quickly to sick been shot game. From Oderhaus, Barth completed  around a thousand searches for large game across the region - on vacation also in Namibia . Several special performance dogs emerged from his kennel "Vom Oberharz". For more than 20 years, the forester was active on the board of the Hirschmann Association, and in 1983 he represented the association with Birko vom Oberharz at the international search for bloodhounds in Hungary . Barth is the owner of the golden service pin of the Jagdgebrauchshundverband (JGHV) for difficult searches.

Already during his time as the head of the forest office and nature park officer of the state forest administration in the Goslar district , half of the funds for the nature park were used for active nature conservation and half for promoting recreation. Thanks to his initiative, more than 100 wet biotopes were created in and around the Harz Mountains and well over 100 km of flowing water were renatured. In Rhume -Gewässer Association he made as a board member that countless impassable for fish and small animals Sohlabstürze by Sohlgleiten have been replaced to ensure that the ecological continuity for the entire riverine fauna can be ensured. He showed in practice that, in contrast to fish ladders , slides are not only extremely valuable in keeping with nature and ecologically, but are also particularly effective for recreation for the population.

At times Barth gave up to a hundred lectures a year and has been given teaching assignments, e.g. B. at the Landesforstschule Düsterntal, at the Jägerlehrhof Springe and at the Universities of Göttingen and Clausthal-Zellerfeld . He published numerous scientific articles in specialist publications and designed exhibitions. He summarized his experience in the field of nature conservation in 1987 in the book Practical Environment and Nature Conservation. Suggestions for hunters and foresters, farmers, town and water engineers and everyone else who wants to help together. The second, completely revised and redesigned edition under the title Nature Conservation - The Feasible. Practical Environment and Nature Conservation for All (1995) it became a standard work in its field. Through his work, Barth earned the reputation of being a pioneer of nature conservation within the Lower Saxony state forest administration, who repeatedly managed to involve the local citizens in nature conservation campaigns. When, after four years of preparation, the Lower Saxony state government established the Harz National Park as the eleventh German national park on January 1, 1994, Wolf-Eberhard Barth was appointed the founding director as chief forestry director. In this role, he used a win-win strategy to successfully promote the reintroduction of lynxes in the Harz Mountains, which he and his employees had started in 1999. Before that, he had already been able to gain experience with the release of wood grouse from 1978 onwards . However, this project was discontinued in 2003, as the young capercaillie, as shown in a dissertation, always fell victim to the fox population , which in turn had grown extraordinarily as a result of the oral vaccination against rabies .

During his active service, Barth supported the establishment of the Eifel National Park . He was also one of the signatories of the “Göttingen Declaration” published in 2004 by the “Copyright for Education and Science” alliance.

After 30 years of management function within the state forest administration, he retired at the end of 2004. His successor as national park manager was Andreas Pusch .

Since Barth had given up the hunt in his time as National Park Manager due to lack of time and in the interests of nature conservation in a national park and his last Hanoverian bloodhound had died, Barth was finally faced with the question of which breed of dog he and his wife should turn to in the future wanted, because he had always consistently advocated that the Hanoverian welding dog should be reserved for specialists who can use and lead this breed of dog, which is more than 1500 years old (once the lead dog, later the German welding dog). The choice fell on a Rhodesian Ridgeback . During a vacation in South Africa in 2002, there was a meeting with the internationally known Ridgeback expert Scotty Stewart in Johannesburg , where Barth learned a lot about the African hunting dog breed and its use in the Kruger National Park , for example . While they were still on vacation, Barth and his wife looked for a bitch with whom the forester also had a successful litter in the Rhodesian-Ridgeback-Club ELSA e. V. has pulled.

Since his retirement, Barth has been involved in multidisciplinary evolution issues relating to the species-appropriate "psychotope" of humans, which developed over 50 million years as a type of forest and for this reason still likes to surround itself with nature (indoor plants, gardens) and in forested areas. His knowledge of evolutionary relationships, in particular our behavior and its importance for our daily life of "inner nature" - jungle senses, power of fears and smells, brain programming and early education, immune system, health, (in) human behavior, ethics, man-woman- Differences u. a. - and "external nature" - ecology, nature and animal protection, mosaic cycle dynamics of ecosystems, national parks, near-natural, species-rich forests and flowing and still waters, wildlife biology, hunting, morality, grazing justice, etc. a. - he published his latest book “Affentheater” in 2018.

Wolf-Eberhard Barth, who has been married to the artist and taxidermist Anna Barth since 1981, lives with his wife in Schulenberg in the Upper Harz Mountains .

Fonts

• The Hanoverian welding dog as an example of the development of a German hunting dog . Hannoversch-Münden (Göttingen) 1969 ( dissertation ).
• The Hanoverian bloodhound. An example of the development of a German hunting dog breed (=  publication series of the Landesjagdverband Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg . Issue 2). Hamburg 1970.
• Tourism in forest areas. Experiences about control possibilities of tourist flows . In: New archive for Lower Saxony . tape 31 , no. 3 , 1982, pp. 270-289 .
• as picture author: wetlands in the community. A handout of the UAN series of publications of the Lower Saxony Association of Cities and Municipalities, Issue 11, pp. 17-23. Hanover 1986.
• Nature conservation - the feasible. Practical environmental and nature protection for everyone. A guide. Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-490-11418-3 (The first edition appeared in 1987 under the title Practical Environment and Nature Conservation. Suggestions for hunters and foresters, farmers, urban and hydraulic engineers and anyone else who wants to help. ).
• The Harz National Park concerns us all! In: Report of the Natural History Society Hannover, report 139, commemorative publication on the 200th anniversary of the NGH . Hanover 1997, p. 7-17 .
• In the middle of Germany. Resettlement of the lynx in the Harz Mountains . In: National Park . No. 116 , 2002, pp. 44-47 .
• with Stephanie Glagla-Dietz: Natural forest dynamics as a model for ecological networking through wilderness-like green bridges and natural corridors . Sankt Andreasberg 2004 (abbreviated published in Habitat Corridors for Man and Nature . (= Nature Conservation and Biological Diversity. Issue 17). Federal Agency for Nature Conservation , Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-7843-3917-4 , pp. 127–148).
• Monkey theater. Evolution does not release us from our "psychotope" - somewhere between the jungle and concrete. Our great nature book. Zug 2018, ISBN 978-3-03831-162-1 .

Quotes

"Nature is a petrol station for the soul."

- Wolf-Eberhard Barth : 2003

"We must not underestimate and downplay the fact that today many dog ​​breeds are endangered by ambitious beauty breeders who are more concerned about their own worth than about the health and suitability of their four-legged friends."

- Wolf-Eberhard Barth : 2007

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolf-Eberhard Barth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wolf-Eberhard Barth at Xing.com (with photo)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ingeborg Barth celebrated her 100th birthday.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Community newspaper Neuendettelsau; Retrieved January 20, 2008.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Barth's page about the Rhodesian Ridgeback ; Status: May 6, 2009 in the Internet archive.
3. ↑ Siano, Ralf: Survival, use of space and habitat, as well as feeding of wild capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus L.) in the Harz National Park. Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-86727-855-3 .
4. ↑ ^{a b} Soul gas station for the people . In: Aachener Zeitung , November 3, 2003; accessed on August 18, 2018.
5. ^ Action alliance “Copyright for Education and Science” - signatory ; Retrieved December 10, 2007.