For more than ten years, activists fought to save the Hambach Forest from the lignite excavators. Now he is close to death: without radical intervention, the forest will have died of thirst in five years.
It is early autumn when Pierre Ibisch is striding through the Hambach Forest with concentration. It has started to rain, drops are clinging to the brim of his hat. The clouds in the sky have finally been providing liquid again for a few days – after a grueling drought summer.
The biology professor stops at a mighty oak tree, bends down and reaches deep into the earth. He raises his hand, Rhenish forest soil trickles through his fingers like desert sand. The look over his full beard darkens: “Everything is much too dry!” Even the rain can’t change that.