After the dispute over nature conservation in the Bavarian Forest National Park has been resolved, the State Association for Bird and Nature Conservation (LBV) assumes that such “breaking of a taboo” will not happen again. “Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber has clearly committed himself to the natural zone of the national park,” says LBV boss Norbert Schäffer. “We see his words as a guarantee for the future that the natural zone is inviolable and that nature can be nature there and that humans will not interfere.” They also expect the Federal Nature Conservation Union (BN) to ensure that the national park and especially the natural zone in the protected area “is secured for now”. However, BN boss Richard Mergner expects that the national park critics in the region and the state government will not stop wanting to weaken the national park. That’s why the dispute remains a “negative signal”.
Meanwhile, on Monday, the national park committee approved the plans of national park chief Ursula Schuster, according to which a little more than 18 hectares will be removed from the natural zone and transferred to the adjacent management zone so that the bark beetle can be combated there. Conservationists, especially LBV boss Schäffer, had sharply criticized this as weakening the protected area. Contrary to what was originally planned, 18 hectares of area will be transferred from the management zone to the natural zone elsewhere as compensation, so that there will be no quantitative change to the natural zone. Environment Minister Glauber, who is officially responsible for the national park, ordered the compensation to appease the deeply angry nature conservationists.
To outsiders, the dispute may seem somewhat bizarre. After all, the areas in question make up just 0.07 percent of the approximately 25,000 hectare protected area. For the conservationists and many national park fans, the plans touch on the foundations of the protected area. For them, the Bavarian Forest National Park, as the oldest and probably most renowned national park in Germany, is the flagship of nature conservation in the Free State. He should not be touched, says Schäffer. He is convinced that the dispute also shows that a hard core of foresters, forest owners and other critics would still rather have the protected area, which is now almost 54 years old, gone today rather than tomorrow.
As evidence, Schäffer refers to statements by the Hohenzollern forestry chief, Raimund Friderichs, in the BR. The Hohenzollerns own 2,200 hectares of forest in the immediate vicinity of the national park, making them one of the largest forest owners in the region. Friderichs suggested in the BR that the areas of the national park be turned into a nature park, then the bark beetle could be combated there. After all, citizens don’t care whether they are in a national park or a nature park. “Such desires must be put a stop to,” says Schäffer. “We therefore rely on Glauber’s words.”
The chairman of the national park committee, which includes the municipalities around the protected area, and district administrator of the Freyung-Grafenau district, Sebastian Gruber (CSU), blames Deputy Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger (FW) for the dispute. “Anyone who keeps saying, like Aiwanger, that the Bavarian Forest has protected itself to death, is falling back into black-and-white thinking that I thought we had overcome long ago,” says Gruber. “The national park is a success story for the entire region.” The district administrator would like “more objectivity and seriousness, not least because of the legitimate concerns of forest owners about the bark beetle.” Aiwanger had made the fight against the bark beetle in the Bavarian Forest his cause and met several times with forest owners and national park critics.
Meanwhile, national park director Schuster has announced that her protected area will be certified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for recognition as a Category II protected area. The high-ranking designation is awarded to protected areas with a natural zone of at least 75 percent of their area. According to the IUCN definition, only “large natural or semi-natural areas or landscapes including their typical species and ecosystem features” are eligible for this, i.e. national parks. The certification should take place in the summer.