Economics and Hunting Minister Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters) has welcomed the Bavarian Forest National Park’s plans to remove two areas from the protected area’s natural zone in order to enable bark beetle control on them. “This is a very sensible decision,” said Aiwanger. “Beetle control is practiced forest protection and therefore nature and environmental protection.” In the Bavarian Forest, the Bavarian state forests, private forest owners and the national park fought together to preserve “healthy, green forests,” said Aiwanger. “We don’t want forest images like those in the Harz National Park, where after the spruce forests have died off due to bark beetles, all that’s left is grassy steppe in which a forest walker can no longer find shade for kilometers in summer.”
Forestry Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU), who is actually responsible for combating the bark beetle in the forests in Bavaria and usually reacts very reservedly when Aiwanger poaches in her area of responsibility, also welcomes the plans. “In my opinion, the images we are currently seeing around the national park could have been prevented,” she says. “But unfortunately our warnings were largely ignored.”
The Forestry Ministry last urgently warned the Environment Ministry in January 2022 of a foreseeable mass proliferation of bark beetles in the national park and called for a broader control zone. “Unfortunately that didn’t happen,” says Kaniber. “The mistakes from back then must not be repeated. It is now important to pull together to prevent further spread.” The farmers’ association shares Aiwanger’s and Kaniber’s assessments.
At the same time, however, criticism is becoming harsher. Not only is the State Association for Bird and Nature Conservation (LBV) demanding that the national park withdraw the plans, but the Greens and the Association for Nature Conservation (BN) are now also doing the same. “The bark beetle is spreading because of climate overheating, which is weakening the spruce, and not because there is a national park nearby,” says Green Party member of the state parliament Patrick Friedl. “A national park, on the other hand, shows how nature deals with such disasters and how a new and stable forest is created again.” Therefore, Aiwanger’s party colleague and Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber, as the minister actually responsible for the national park, had to revoke the plans.
BN boss Richard Merger calls Aiwanger’s statements about a particular bark beetle threat from the national park “technically absurd”. The pest is becoming “a huge problem wherever excessive game populations and incorrect forest management have prevented the development of natural mixed forests.” Aiwanger should work for appropriate regulation of roe deer and red deer in Bavaria, for which he is also responsible as hunting minister, instead of interfering in the interests of the national park. At the same time, Mergner refers to a report that the State Institute for Forestry and Forestry published years ago, according to which the precautionary measures and control strategies that the national park has taken against the bark beetle are completely sufficient.
National park director Ursula Schuster admitted last week that, in view of the impending bark beetle catastrophe in the Bavarian Forest, she had offered to remove two small areas of six and eleven hectares from the natural zone in order to enable the pest to be combated there. At the same time, she emphasized that the offer was not necessary for forest protection reasons, because the previous anti-bark beetle measures on the outskirts of the national park were completely sufficient to protect the forests outside. The offer is intended to appease the critical attitude of some forest owners against the national park.
The natural zone of the national park is actually taboo for bark beetle control measures and all other human interventions. Nature is left to its own devices there. If the plans become reality without compensation elsewhere, it would be the first case of this kind in the national park’s almost 54-year history. Environment Minister Glauber defends Schuster’s plans. The district administrator in the Freyung-Grafenau district, Sebastian Gruber (CSU), assumes that they will be implemented. Gruber is currently chairman of the municipal national park committee. The committee, which includes all communities bordering the national park, must approve the plans before they can be implemented.