Photograph: HELMUT FOHRINGER (APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)
WINDISCHGARSTEN. No different time period has prompted as a lot pleasure in Austrian politics in latest days because the phrase “renaturation”. Within the Sengsengebirge and the Reichraminger Hintergebirge, folks know precisely what it means.
“The Kalkalpen Nationwide Park is a profitable renaturation mission,” says Nationwide Park Director Josef Forstinger. “The forests right here had been used very intensively for the iron trade for a very long time and have been returned to nature.” At present, politicians are pleased with the choice to declare over 20,000 hectares of forest a nationwide park in 1997. “However initially, a very totally different use was deliberate for the realm – as a cannon firing vary, as a supply of hydroelectric energy, and a motorway route working via the center was additionally mentioned,” remembers Forstinger. “It was a lucky coincidence that the choice was finally modified as a consequence of resistance from the native inhabitants.”
15,000 hectares as biotope safety forest
The truth that the Kalkalpen Nationwide Park is now Austria’s largest contiguous forest wilderness can also be as a consequence of a provision of the Forestry Act: round 15,000 hectares of forest had been designated as biotope safety forests. There, nature has been given again its pure dynamics. “Course of safety” is the identify of this comparatively new nature conservation technique, which fits far past the sooner doctrine of inhabitants conservation. “Course of safety means nothing aside from the safety of pure evolution. Leaving nature to itself is the best type of safety we may give nature,” explains biologist Erich Weigand.
Picture: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER
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Picture: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER
Weigand is liable for analysis coordination and the protected belongings division within the nationwide park. “We all know that there are jungle islands within the nationwide park the place people have virtually by no means been. Extremely demanding jungle organisms have survived right here. My analysis is strongly centered on jungle relic species amongst beetles. We’ve got been in a position to establish 41 such species within the nationwide park. This excessive variety of species is sensational for the Jap Alps area and may in any other case solely be discovered within the primeval forests of Bulgaria and Romania, for instance. We are able to see that these species are actually steadily spreading from these islands.”
Primitive impression
The view over the gorge-like cuts within the heart of the Hintergebirge is certainly spectacular. Each the steepness of the slopes and the tree trunks mendacity criss-cross after windbreaks create a primeval impression. Appearances will not be misleading. “There are rocky peaks right here that nobody has in all probability ever stood on,” says Franz Sieghartsleitner, who’s main a gaggle of journalists via the core space of the nationwide park on this sultry June day. Some slopes have solely been used for forestry as soon as, within the first half of the nineteenth century. Stays of dams manufactured from wooden that made the streams usable for timber rafting nonetheless inform the story of the arduous and harmful use of those forests, a few of which have been left to themselves for nearly 200 years. Useless wooden, i.e. fallen timber, just isn’t an aesthetic and financial nuisance that have to be “cleared away” as rapidly as doable, however an vital habitat and an authentic part of a forest life cycle that people radically shorten in industrial forests.
These “primeval forests” differ in some ways from the managed forests that dominate our concept of a forest in Central Europe. For instance, the bark beetle, which is now the principle enemy of foresters in all places, just isn’t combated right here. “For us within the nationwide park, the bark beetle just isn’t a nuisance, however a motor that accelerates forest transformation. We’re sure that forests with out human intervention adapt higher to local weather change than areas used for forestry. We’ve got utilized for an exception and may let the bark beetle work as a part of the pure dynamics on 79 % of our space,” says forester Christian Fuxjäger. The truth that he not solely takes care of wildlife cameras and the delicate lynx inhabitants within the nationwide park, but additionally “bark beetle administration” has to do with the remaining 21 % of the realm. Within the peripheral zone, contaminated trunks are eliminated as elsewhere to stop injury to the adjoining forests.
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Picture: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER