From the point of view of the Federal Nature Conservation Agency, the mass cultivation of spruce, fir and pine trees is not silviculture, but intensive agriculture – including pesticides, fertilizers and clear-cutting.
Domestic Christmas trees are very popular. This can also be seen from the fact that the opening of the Christmas tree season in Bavaria is a fixed date in the calendar of Minister of Agriculture Michaela Kaniber (CSU). So also this year. “A Christmas tree from Bavaria belongs to a Bavarian Christmas,” said Kaniber, when she and Head of State Florian Herrmann (CSU) picked up the saw on a plantation in the Upper Bavarian district of Freising at the end of November and cut down a well-tended Nordmann fir.
From Kaniber’s point of view, Christmas trees from Bavaria have many advantages. “They are freshly cut, have top quality and, above all, no long transport routes behind them,” she said. “It’s good for the environment and ensures that Christmas can be enjoyed for a long time.” The buyers are obviously very satisfied. 80 percent of the four million Christmas trees that are sold every Christmas in Bavaria come from Bavaria.
The Bund Naturschutz (BN) is now clouding the joy of the home Christmas tree with a harsh accusation. He has found that in at least some regions, forests are being cleared and turned into Christmas tree plantations. “But that shouldn’t be the case,” says BN state representative Martin Geilhufe. “An intensive plantation economy eats its way into the Bavarian forests.” The BN is not generally against Christmas trees from Bavaria. But from his point of view no forests should be felled for the plantings. That is why he demands that the establishment of Christmas tree plantations in the forests of Bavaria be banned.
Geilhufe supports the claim with three examples. In the Sinntal in Lower Franconia, eleven smaller forests with a total area of 27 hectares have had to give way to Christmas tree plantations over the past 20 years. That corresponds to 36 soccer fields. In the districts of Dachau and Regensburg it was even 30 hectares each, so together an area of about 80 soccer fields.
The BN is bothered by the fact that farming methods are commonplace on the plantations that are forbidden in forests or cause massive damage to them. As examples, he cites the use of pesticides and mineral fertilizers, as are common in intensive agriculture, clear-cutting, mechanical processing of the soil, pure stands of non-native tree species and permanent fencing. According to the Bavarian forest law, only Christmas tree plantations outside of forests have to be approved. Plantations in forests count as forest.