Andrew Curry is a journalist based in Berlin. He
previously wrote for the magazine in August 2021
about archaeological research into the true
history of gladiators.Prince Salm’s grandfather. Timber and its by-
products are now a $150-billion-a-year enterprise
employing more than 700,000 Germans. A third
of the country is covered with trees today.
That’s why years of drought and infestation
have come as such a shock. For the first time,
Germans are confronting the possibility of a
future with dramatically fewer trees. “We don’t
want to imagine this in Germany, which thinks
of itself as a forest country,” says Pierre Ibisch,
an ecologist at Eberswalde University for Sus-
tainable Development. “But we face this risk.”T
HE GERMAN GOVERNMENT has
declared the situation a national
crisis, providing forest owners with
nearly two billion dollars in sub-
sidies to remove beetle-damaged
deadfall and replant forests.
Some close-to-nature forestry advocates say
that might be a mistake. Instead of rushing to
plant more trees, they see an opportunity to do
less. Leaving deadwood and tree canopies to
slowly rot returns nutrients to the soil, boosting
the health as well as the diversity of surviving
trees. “From our perspective, less is always
more,” says Knut Sturm, forest manager for the
city of Lübeck.
There are caveats, of course. Close-to-nature
forests can be profitable, but they require the
timber industry and foresters to adjust to a
different way of doing business. Sawmills, for
example, are set up to process narrow, straight
spruce trunks, not portly old-growth oaks.
As climate change accelerates, it’s also impor-
tant to consider planting more drought-resistant
species imported from elsewhere, says Marcus
Lindner, a scientist at the European Forest
Institute. “It’s possible to shift to more close-
to-nature silviculture but still bring in more
drought-tolerant species.”
Back in Wallhausen, the sun is dropping low,
and lights are beginning to come on in the vil-
lage below. “I want for my children that they
can choose from 10 different species, not just
Douglas fir or spruce,” Prince Salm says, calling
his panting spaniel to heel and turning for home.
“We have to make sure the same mistakes aren’t
made all over again.” jand a blue down vest. Beneath the crowns of tall
Douglas firs that survived Wiebke, young oak,
beech, and cherry trees that took root in the
hurricane’s wake are aflame with the last of the
season’s red and yellow leaves.
“Everything you see here came in naturally,”
he says, as his brown-and-white cocker spaniel
disappears into a dense tangle of saplings and
brush. “The only investment we make is roads
and hunting.”
In a way, German forestry is edging away
from its roots. The nation was one of the first to
approach forests as a resource to be managed.
In 1713 an administrator named Hans Carl von
Carlowitz advocated that landowners plant new
trees to replace what they cut down for mining
and metal production. It was the genesis of the
concept of sustainability—but in a narrower
sense than the word is used today. Following
Carlowitz, German foresters have approached
trees with industrial efficiency, planting fast-
growing species such as spruce in neatly spaced
AFTER THE HURRICANE
BATTERED THE FORESTS,
‘WE SAID, “NATURE
KNOWS BETTER
WHAT SHOULD BE HERE,” ’
PRINCE SALM SAYS.rows. The approach caught on around the world
and is still popular in Germany.
A century ago a botanist named Alfred Möller
pushed back. He argued that forests were com-
plex organisms and that trees shouldn’t be
cultivated like slow-growing stalks of wheat.
Instead, forests should be managed the way
nature might: by selectively felling individual
trees while maintaining a continuous cover.
Möller, who died in 1922, never had a chance
to see his ideas put into practice. After World
War II, forests all over Germany were logged
to help rebuild war-damaged cities in Britain,
France, and the U.S.S.R. To replace them, for-
esters planted millions of trees, mostly spruces,
in the 1950s. It was the beginning of a booming
forestry industry that included foresters like
FIXING FORESTS 139