The face of the climate emergency

"Enjoy the view, before our train goes through a dense coniferous forest." So it sounds out of the speakers in the wagons of the Nostalgiezugs that is threaded from the highest mountain in Northern Germany, the Brocken, in the depth. The announcement on the tape is obviously older, because the famous German forest – the here.

someone Would want the word "climate emergency" visualize – in the Harz mountains, the Central mountains between the States of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, would be to find the matching images: Bare tree, bare-bones jut into the sky. Some of the stems are bent at half height, the other with a root fallen. The slopes of the fabled "block mountain", by Goethe in "Faust" and by Otfried Preussler in the "Little witch" immortalized, look like the setting for a horror film: a barren dreariness in grey and brown.

There was no fire, the destroyed in the Harz national Park, the lush Green of the Fichtenwalds. The "printer" called spruce bark beetle shows a great power of destruction. Of course, with human assistance. Because without climate change could spread out the five-Millimeter small animal never so quickly.

"For the people in the Harz mountains, climate change is a disaster."

In the preparation of the disaster, the people, unknowingly worked for centuries: they lived of mining and metallurgy, on cleared the original forest, and forests with fast-growing spruce. With the mono-cultures alone, the natural would have been done yet, but with the hot and extremely dry summers of recent years. The heat weakened the trees and allowed to climb the bark beetle in the higher regions, where it was previously too cold.

For the book printer is the climate change. For the people in the Harz mountains, a disaster. Not only visually. On many square miles of the dead tribes do not have to be felled and taken away, so that the beetles spread. The costs are enormous. At the same time, the deforestation price of the Wood. Trip guests stay away from the destroyed landscape. For a Region that thrives on tourism, is the fatal.

Up to 100'000 progeny per year

The climate emergency is already in our neighborhood a reality. We don't have to show on the sinking Islands in the Pacific. Huge mono-cultures, such as in the German Harz mountains or in the Czech Republic there are not in Switzerland, but the spruce is also the most common tree species. Extreme weather can also accelerate the multiplication of the pests: storms tilt the shallow-rooting spruce trees, in dead wood, the bark beetles find fertile breeding grounds in the heat waves they multiply rapidly. A book printer couple can produce per year, between 30'000 and 100'000 descendants.

With poison is not for you to tackle, insecticides reach under the bark-dwelling beetles at all. Only one Chance remains, the nature of their resistance forces to return: trees grow there, where they belong. Mono-cultures of the voracious beetles and the destroyed Land with mixed crops afforestation. And: global warming stop. All this, however, needs a lot of time. In the short term, it will probably be even worse. More images, such as those of the destroyed resin forest will not remain with us in the near future.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 16.05.2019, 19:51 PM