Bring back real forests across Europe

[The Lawspeaker]

Bring back real forests across Europe
Steve Trent
| 14th October 2019



We must double our forests in size - for the climate, for wildlife and for ourselves.

The latest State of Nature report makes for sobering reading. Many species are in serious trouble, falling in numbers and drawing back into ever-smaller strongholds as we close in around them, a pattern of decline going back hundreds of years. In the rest of Europe, the story is frequently similar. In Germany, more than three quarters of flying insects have disappeared in just 27 years. Farmland birds across Europe have lost over half their populations since 1980. This is a crisis.It is clear that something has to change. We can no longer pretend that existing conservation approaches are working. It is time for an ambitious, optimistic, forward-thinking programme to bring nature back to Europe.

Embrace forests
The challenge is significant and the stakes are high, but we have a chance now to restore our ecosystems, keep carbon out of the atmosphere, and bring wildlife conservation into the twenty-first century on our continent.

The first step is to embrace forests again - once familiar, now almost entirely lost - and restore them to their rightful place in our landscapes. Forests are the among the best solutions to climate breakdown, and changes to our land use, agriculture and forestry practices globally would take us around 37 percent of the way to keeping warming below catastrophic levels. It will be impossibly difficult to engineer a system more efficient at taking carbon out of the atmosphere, holding together the hills and supporting wildlife. Even better, allowing forests to re-establish themselves costs next to nothing. So why, in most European countries, and particularly the UK, are we so unconcerned about having no real forests left?

Ancient woodlands
Forest cover in the UK is around 13 percent, one of the lowest levels in Europe. If you were to exclude plantation forests, grown only for timber and which suffocate biodiversity, this figure would fall still further.Across Europe, the situation is much the same, although not to such a dramatic extent. Majestic, species-rich, carbon-absorbing ancient woodlands have largely been forgotten in favour of sparse, monocultural, neat rows of trees. This cannot carry on.

The good news is that doubling tree cover in the UK can be achieved with little or even no effect on food production, by prioritising land which is low-quality farmland but perfect for woods to flourish.It’s not enough to simply have more trees, however, reforestation must take the form of restoring natural forests, not lining up further industrial woodlands.
One particularly strong reason for this is that over the same area, natural forests store 40 times the carbon of plantations.

Primeval lessons
True forests would provide a home for many of our declining species, enlarging and reconnecting the small fragments of remaining woodland in which they currently cling to life. More species are usually found in larger patches, and connecting separate islands of habitat means if a species is threatened in one area it has an escape route for establishing populations elsewhere.The primeval forest of Białowieża National Park, in Poland, provides a blueprint for what more European forests could – and should – look like.

To a visitor accustomed to UK woodlands, this forest is at times a confusing experience; fallen trees are left to return to the soil, the forest hums with the noise of birds, bison, deer and wolves, and more species of tree, shrub and mushroom can be seen on a single visit than a lifetime spent in the UK’s woodlands. This forest teaches us that if we let forests manage their own affairs, they will thrive.Dr Tomasz Samojlik from the Mammal Research Institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences said: "Until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century [Białowieża Primeval Forest] was not touched by ‘modern’, ‘rational’ forestry. It is an invaluable reference point for all European forest research, but only as long as we do not turn it into managed treestand. "Any attempt at rewilding and restoring ancient woodlands should take the example of Białowieża and aim at including as little human intervention as possible.”

Forest engineers
Of course, part of the reason Białowieża is so diverse is because it is a more balanced ecosystem. Without wolves and lynx, deer populations explode. This results in trees being stripped of their bark and dying, and the rate of survival for smaller trees is massively reduced or entirely cut off. Once wolves were allowed to return to Yellowstone National Park in the USA, the populations of tree species which were dying out have rebounded strongly, as have many species of birds and mammals as the wolves reshape their environment.

Beavers are another essential ‘ecosystem engineer’. They create small patches of wetland which boost biodiversity and lock up more carbon.
The benefits even extend to dealing with the biggest problems facing wildlife today, like climate change, invasive species and disease – the more biodiverse a given area is, the more able it is to withstand external shocks that would demolish a less resilient ecosystem. As these threats grow in number and significance, bringing back nature to our forests will be essential for ‘future-proofing’ them to ensure they survive.To restore our forests to their natural state, we must look for the species which once kept them fully functioning and bustling with life, and bring them back to do so again. This – not the idea of returning to a species mix which existed at some arbitrary point in the past – is why rewilding our landscapes is crucial.

Crossroads
We are at a crossroads in forest management in the UK and Europe. Subsidised overgrazing, over-management, and simply counting the number of trees as a measure of success are demonstrably not working, and we are passing up golden opportunities for natural solutions to climate change and the biodiversity crisis. The resurgence of the rainforests, wildwoods, conifer forests and temperate broadleaved woodlands which would naturally exist in Britain, over at least double the area they currently cover, would begin to redress this imbalance.

This Author
Steve Trent is the executive director of Environmental Justice Foundation.
Image: Environmental Justice Foundation

[catgeorge]

Absolutely yes.

[Daco Celtic]

"Romanian Făgăraș Old-Growth Forest Is Still Threatened". Sad, my ancestors are from this area.

https://wilderness-society.org/roman...ll-threatened/

[The Lawspeaker]

I think what would be a great project, would be too connect the forests in the Jura and the Alps in France and Switzerland to the Black Forest - which can be connected to the Eifel and the Ardennes- now if we were to connect all those to the High Fens in Belgium, and back in Germany to the Reichswald and from there on to forests in (Dutch) Limburg - leading up to Guelders (the areas of the Brunsummerheide (Southern Limburg), Meinweg, the Maasduinen (Northern Limburg) and the Montferland) and the forests of the Veluwezoom, Hoge Veluwe and the Utrechtse Heuvelrug - we could create a near continuous forest from the central Netherlands all the way to Switzerland. And then there are countless other national parks, forests and other preserves that could be connected.

[Tommie]

How murder and corruption are endangering Europe’s Amazon
Dec 14, 2019







Primeval forests across Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, often referred to as ‘Europe’s Amazon,’ have become an unlikely battleground between illegal loggers and those trying to protect one of the world’s most ancient ecosystems.

Romania is home to more than half of Europe’s last remaining old-growth and virgin forests—valuable ecosystems inhabited by diverse wildlife, including bears, wolves, lynx, and wildcats. Such primeval forests are unique and an important part of Europe’s ‘lungs,’ absorbing 70 percent more carbon than logged forests. However, research by Greenpeace Romania estimates that Romania is losing between three and nine hectares of its total forest cover every hour as a result of intensive illegal logging.



Since Romania joined the EU in 2007 and consequently opened up its national economy to global markets, the demand pressure on the country’s forests has increased dramatically. A lucrative black market has developed, in which illegal wood is being used to make paper, building materials and furniture for companies such as Austria’s Holzindustrie Schweighofer, France’s Active Trading S.A and Sweden’s IKEA.

This market has come at a high human cost. In recent years, six foresters have been killed, while 650 have been beaten, attacked with axes and knives, or even shot at after catching illegal loggers in the act, according to Romania’s Forestry Union.







The death of two forest rangers in September was the tip of the iceberg and sparked protests across Romania last month. 50-year-old father of three, Raducu Gorcioaia, was beaten to death near a forest in Iasi county in eastern Romania while investigating a report of illegal logging. A few weeks later, Liviu Pavel Pop, 30, openly criticised illegal logging and was consequently shot dead in the northwestern Maramures—also leaving behind three children.



On 3 November, thousands of Romanians took to the streets of Bucharest. Protests were also held by Romania’s diaspora in Brussels, Madrid, and London. Adina, 39, who organised the protests in London, in which dozens turned out, explained that they were calling for thorough criminal investigations into the deaths of forest workers, as well as an immediate upgrade of the country’s automated logging tracking system and tighter legislation. “We’ve gotten to the phase where nobody gives a damn about what’s going on with our national forests,” she told MIR. “And that’s our treasure—and no one is protecting it, so that’s why we’re on the streets.”

Blame was placed on the Romanian government, which maintains a reputation of having thick layers of corruption and greed that it has struggled to shake off since coming to power thirty years ago. Lena, 25, who moved to London after failing to find a job back home told us: “We are living with this huge octopus of corruption that is attacking every organ whatsoever of what a healthy society is. Looking at the very basic things like health, education, environment—absolutely everything is attacked.”

Since Romanians put an end to Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist reign in 1989, they have been met with a series of populist politicians who have patently failed to deliver on their promises of higher standards of living—resorting instead to bribery, fraud, and procedural rule-bending. According to a recent study, more than €38 billion is lost every year in Romania due to corruption, which is equivalent to 15.6 percent of its GDP. In an attempt to tackle this entrenched corruption, hundreds of thousands of protesters have gathered across Romania in the past four years, in numbers unseen since the 1990s. While corruption is still rampant, protesters have successfully created an increasingly powerful and uncompromising civil society, that politicians are being forced to listen to.


Before the anti-logging protests took place last month, the government insisted that nothing illegal was happening in its forests. This discourse was helped by the fact that Romania conveniently held the presidency of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2019, which meant it had the opportunity to set policy objectives (including environmental policies) for the whole of the EU. Romania’s corrupt government was thus given a dangerous ‘carte blanche’ when it came to tackling its illegal logging.

However, last month’s protests seem to have finally shaken up Romanian politicians, once again illustrating the power that Romania’s civil society can have in guiding the nation’s fragile democracy. Romania’s recently re-elected President Klaus Iohannis said in a press conference last week: “I personally want to get very much involved in this topic, because illegal logging must be stopped. We need solid policies, firm actions so that environmental guards (are restored) to prevent illegal woodcutting.”







This drastic change in narrative is certainly a step in the right direction. However, as Christina Diciiu, 27, from the Romanian Cultural Institute told MIR, “The Romanian government has always made lots of promises, and doesn’t always stick to its word. I’m not saying that I have no hope, but things in Romania are usually done in slow motion.”

Romanian officials have long argued that Western countries cut their natural forests in the past and therefore, Romania should be allowed to do the same. This issue, which is also raised in other parts of the world, touches on the bigger context of ecological responsibility and global commons. A report released by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) this year clearly emphasises that humanity is facing a combined, strongly interconnected climate and biodiversity crisis. Every natural forest that is logged anywhere in the world adds to the world’s crisis situation.



According to a report by Romania insider, 20 million cubic meters of wood are illegally cut every year, which represents an illegal profit of 1 billion euros. Romania urgently needs far greater international support across the board to help its civil society put an end to corruption and murder endangering Europe’s last primeval forests at an alarming rate.

https://www.mironline.ca/trees-and-t...uropes-amazon/