When the head of the Groß-Gerau Forestry Office, Klaus Velbecker, wanders through the forest with his team, trees are marked with color over and over again.

It has always been like that, but it has been different for the last two years.

Foresters used to mark trees that were removed from the stock.

Today they mark trees that will remain standing.

Because in some areas of the forest these are significantly fewer than those that have to be felled.

Not because the wood is urgently needed, but because they are sick or attacked by pests.

Around the Mönchbruch nature reserve you sometimes think you are in a large clearing instead of in the forest because there are hardly any trees left.

Tree stumps tell of a former forest that fell victim to climate change and the associated drought.

And where trees are no longer supplied with enough water, pests nest.

The bark beetle is just one of them.

That is why the forest can hardly keep up with the felling of sick and pest-infested trees.

Above all, Velbecker fears violent storms that cut the trees.

Conifers, mostly shallow-rooted trees that no longer have contact with the groundwater, then bend over like matches because they can no longer find a hold in the sandy soil.

Reconstruction of the forest

HessenForst has long been making plans for how the forest can be rebuilt.

This has also begun in the Mönchbruch landscape protection area.

Hornbeams, oaks and other trees are planted on an area of ​​around two hectares that are supposed to withstand climate change better than the previous conifers.

20,000 seedlings were brought into the ground, but only a few will grow the big tree.

Because young trees that do not grow as fast as others, or trees that are too close and hinder the growth of other trees, are felled again over the years.

But when will the seedlings, which are only around 30 centimeters long, become a real forest again?

“We won't experience that again,” says Velbecker: “Just as we benefit from the current forest that our ancestors created, so our descendants will benefit from the forest that we are creating.” And it will look different from most of the forests of today, because it has to be adapted to the increasing warm and dry periods.

In order to get as much yield as possible from the forest, the fast-growing conifers have preferred to be planted in the past decades.

A mistake, as we can see today, because monocultures emerged.

A real forest lives from the variety of trees and vegetation on the edge.

Forests, as the foresters now know, must not only be designed for yield.

They must be planned for a long-term existence.

For this reason, mixed forests are mainly created for the new plantings.

What is left of the forest must also be handled with particular care, says Velbecker when driving through the forest.

And there is another problem that has to do with Corona.

In recent months, more and more people have been pushing themselves into nature, where they did not have to wear masks and, unlike in the inner cities, could breathe freely.

But not all contemporaries evidently recognize the value of the forest as proclaimed by Velbecker.

The forester recently met a walker who, despite the strict smoking ban in the forest, was pulling on a big cigar.

The man told Velbecker that he would be happy to turn off the cigar if he got five euros for it.

After all, the cigar was expensive.

What makes you smile has a first background.

Last year, more than 20 hectares of forest burned down between Walldorf and the airport grounds.

The fire brigade was busy extinguishing the fire for two days.

For Velbecker, the cause of the fire was "99.9 percent of a carelessly thrown cigarette butt".

The remains of the fire have now been cleared, and it is now being reforested.

The forest now has to plant 200,000 small trees.

More than 100 information boards

To remind people of the rules in landscape protection areas, more than 100 information boards have been set up around the Mönchbruch in the past few weeks.

Nobody should be able to say that they did not know the rules.

And these rules also state that dogs must be kept on a leash.

Especially along the huge, ecologically significant meadows in Mönchbruch.

There are numerous ground-nesters there, including many rare species.

If the animals are frightened by stray dogs, they often do not return to their breeding grounds and the offspring die.

Velbecker is stunned when mountain bikers ride across these meadows with their technically well-equipped bikes.

Such observations are not the exception, they are increasingly becoming the rule.

Also because the local recreation area around the Mönchbruch attracts visitors from the entire Rhine-Main region, as can be seen from the car license plates in the parking lots.

In order to protect nature, in the future both forest workers and the Lower Nature Conservation Authority will be increasingly out and about in the landscape protection areas, especially on weekends, and punish violations.

If you get caught, you should have a big wallet.

It starts at 75 euros for minor violations, and the catalog of fines ends at 25,000 euros.