Sun, Feb 14, 2016
The vast beech forests that have protected and nourished our ancestors from the Black Sea to the Atlantic, from Sicily to southern Sweden since the last Ice Age have almost disappeared. A single tree species once dominated large parts of the European continent. Beech trees are indestructible, almost resistant to any kind of climate change. Rain, snow, ice and even intense heat can do little harm to them. An intact beech forest is a closed ecosystem, a kind of superorganism that renews itself and creates habitat for many fellow inhabitants. Since 2011 UNESCO has listed the five German old forest stands "Grumsiner Forst" in Brandenburg, the "Kellerwald-Edersee National Park" in Hesse, the "Jasmund National Park" on Rügen, the "Serrahner Buchenwald" in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the "Hainich National Park" in Thuringia together with the Carpathian primeval forests of Slovakia and the Ukraine under the cumbersome designation "Buchenurwälder in den Karpaten und alte Buchenwälder in Deutschland" (beech primeval forests in the Carpathians and old beech forests in Germany) as a common world natural heritage site. This is nothing more - but also nothing less than a shaky insurance policy for a biological World Heritage Site as a puzzle building block for an intact environment of future generations. A kind of bet on the future of a gene database that will help to maintain the basis beyond economic efficiency and legislative periods that has ensured the survival of post-glacial people for the last 10,000 years. Preserving and protecting this heritage is a decision that requires foresight, but perhaps only "common sense".