Pests and storms damage trees. They indirectly influence how much wood is cut. Less of this so-called damaged wood has resulted in a decline in the amount of wood produced.
Fewer trees were felled in Germany last year than in 2022. With 70.6 million cubic meters of wood felled, the decline is 10.3 percent. According to that Federal Statistical Office This is partly because fewer trees in the forest were damaged, for example by storms. This so-called damaged wood accounts for the largest share of how much wood is cut down in Germany.
2020 and 2021 were the last years in which a particularly large number of trees were felled. The bark beetle was primarily to blame for this. It particularly affected forests in which only spruce trees were planted, so-called monocultures. Between 2020 and 2021, over forty million cubic meters of wood had to be felled because insects had attacked trees. For this reason, over 27 million cubic meters of wood were cut in 2023.
Wood as energy supplier
Storms also damage forests and trees. Last year, almost five million cubic meters of wood were collected. A decline, because in 2022 strong winds caused more than twice as much damaged wood.
Over 50 percent of the wood from Germany is processed in the sawing and veneering industry, for example into pallets or parquet. The proportion of wood used to generate energy rose again last year – by 1.4 percent to just under twenty percent.