“Solid and much more resilient forests”: what will the forestry of the future look like in Moselle?

“The forestry of the future involves many foresters who would like to return to a natural way of managing forests, against artificialization and monocultures which replace natural forests”explains Ernst Zürcher, famous forest engineer and author of numerous works on trees, guest of France Bleu Lorraine, Friday October 11. He is giving a conference at the Rombas cultural space this Friday. “These foresters have developed forest management methods based on natural regeneration and the selection of the most beautiful trees.”

The forest engineer specifies that these practices are done “continuously covered”. “The image of the forest remains more or less intact and we harvest trees much more precisely and carefully than what happens when we clear-cut and replant an entirely artificial forest.”he explains.

“It helps maintain wildlife, soil quality, hydrological cycles”continues the professor emeritus at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, in Switzerland. “The water continues to be filtered by these soils and these forests remain much more resilient in relation to climatic hazards and pests. They are in balance, in interaction. The species complement each other and it is a very healthy system, comparatively. to monocultures where the trees are very quickly weakened.”

Do not replace old growth forests

Ernst Zürcher recalls that the forest, “it’s something living, we can even compare it to an organism. And we don’t exploit an organism, we manage an organism so that it gives the best of itself. It gives much more wood high quality than when we replace a natural system with an artificial system which no longer has all its functionalities.”

According to him, this forestry does not reduce yields of the operators of our forests. “Wood grows on trees, and the bigger and bigger the trees, the more wood grows on that tree.”he specifies. “And when you replace a forest with big, growing trees with a young forest, it takes a very long time until it produces as much as the old ones produced. When you replace a forest, how long does it take? wait until we can harvest wood again? That’s the difference.”