The forest is not doing well.

Anyone who walks through nature with open eyes this spring will see brown instead of green conifers and small, but also quite large bare areas.

The dying trees are spruces, which has a very special insect on its conscience: the bark beetle.

Above all, two species become dangerous for the tree, no matter how harmless and beautiful their names may sound: book printer and copper engraver.

Oliver Bock

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Rheingau-Taunus district and for Wiesbaden.

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In order to reproduce, they burrow many tunnels under the bark. This does not disturb the tree as long as their numbers are small. Insects are part of the forest, and the tree defends itself against annoying pests with resin. With the resin he prevents the beetles from penetrating through the bark. But when the tree is weakened, or when there are far too many of these invaders, its natural defenses are not enough.

Whenever it rarely rains and when it is very warm for a long time, the bark beetle can multiply in large numbers.

The tree's health suffers when it is too hot and too dry and its shallow roots cannot draw enough water from the soil.

And if there are a lot of spruce trees in a forest, the bark beetle can spread very quickly from trunk to trunk and kill many trees in a short time.

This is not only bad for the forest visitors, but also for the forest owner, because the wood from these trees cannot be used for furniture or wooden houses and therefore has to be sold cheaply.

Then he lacks the money to care for the forest.

However, because the forester and forest owner does not want to spray poison against the insects in the forest, the only option is to quickly fell the trees infested with bark beetles and transport them out of the forest so that the beetles do not infect more trees in the neighborhood .

Large machines fell the trees at lightning speed, and this is how the large bare areas in the forest are created.

Everyone can help

But the forest does not die, it changes.

If people were to sit back and wait and see, new trees would eventually grow in the bare spots.

Trees that are better able to cope with climate change and are not as sensitive to pests.

But that can take a long time.

And because we like the forest, because we want to go there for recreation, to go for walks, bike rides, to play hide-and-seek or to pick mushrooms, and because it is important for protecting our groundwater and filtering polluted air, we don't wait that long.

The foresters and forest owners plant young trees that they know can cope better with heat and drought than the spruce, which will probably soon be very rare in our forest. Walkers will recognize the protections with new trees at gates in the forest. Because the growing trees have to be protected in the first years of life from the hungry deer and red deer that like to nibble off the buds and bark. Without this protection, every afforestation would be in vain.

The new trees come from North America, the Caucasus, Asia, Southern Europe and North Africa, where it is warmer than here and they are therefore used to higher temperatures.

These include, for example, the Douglas fir, the red oak and the coastal fir.

The goal is healthy mixed forests made up of many different tree species, which are also better able to withstand storms.

If a tree species does not do well, it is not a catastrophe for the entire forest.

If you want to help the forest, you can not only donate to the many reforestation projects.

He can do everything that helps to slow down climate change.

And if you save water at home, for example, you help to protect the groundwater in the ground and make it easier for the trees to quench their thirst.