As of: March 13, 2024, 7:00 a.m
By: Tobias Gmach
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Has a deer bitten here?
With sticks and clothespins, employees of the Office for Food, Agriculture and Forestry are currently marking plants in the forest that will one day grow into trees and should not be hindered in doing so.
The goal: a report on forest regeneration.
© AELF
Deer love buds and shoots of young trees.
Where they nibble and how much is currently being examined in detail.
At the end there is an expert report as the basis for the next firing plans.
What gives forest owners a good overview is too one-sided from a hunter's perspective.
District - If you see people in the forest these weeks clipping clothespins to delicate plants, you shouldn't be surprised.
Behind this is an extensive project by the Weilheim Office for Food, Agriculture and Forestry (AELF).
Around 15,000 plants - between 0.2 and 1.30 meters tall - are currently being examined by authority employees and entrepreneurs commissioned by them in the Starnberg district.
Because the task is so extensive and small-scale, around 30 people are involved.
Their goal: “To check the condition of the vegetation and especially forest regeneration,” says an AELF press release.
To be more precise: You look at where and how often young trees are bitten by deer etc., so-called hoofed game.
At the end, by the way, for the whole of Bavaria, there is the forestry report on the situation of forest regeneration - and thus the basis for planning the shooting of wild animals.
Shoots and buds are among the favorite foods of deer and red deer.
The report, which is prepared every three years for each of the almost 100 hunting areas in the district, is intended to clarify where the browsing of the plants is low, tolerable and too high.
Because of climate change, it is necessary to convert the forests and enrich them with resistant trees - for example with new fir and deciduous trees in the areas in the Five Lakes Region dominated by spruce, explains Franz Etschmann from the AELF.
“For that we simply need a low browsing rate.” Young trees that are heavily nibbled would lose the “battle for light” and would grow more slowly or crookedly.
The data that the AELF forces are currently collecting in the forest will be included in the forestry report for the years 2025 to 2027.
This fall, the results will be discussed in the hunting advisory board - which includes forest owners, farmers, hunters and conservationists - and the final plans will be finalized.
They will be released by the Lower Hunting Authority in the district office and will take effect at the start of the next hunting season on April 1, 2025.
Forest owner: “Need a good mix of trees”
When asked about the forestry report, Martin Fink, chairman of the forest owners' association in the district, said: “I am fully behind it.
This is an important basis for discussion.” And he emphasizes: “We need a good mix of trees for the climate forest.” Fink currently sees no browsing problem in his forest near Geisenbrunn.
He regularly discusses with his hunter where game needs to be “taken out”.
The areas rotated, so to speak.
“We want to have deer, but there has to be a tolerable animal density,” says Fink.
Forest owners like him and the AELF want to forego protective measures as far as possible.
After all, fences, protective columns, nets or covers are not cheap.
Hartwig Görtler, chairman of the district hunting association, sees himself as an “advocate for the game” and as “not an opponent of the report”.
But he thinks: “It is not objective.” It is a “pure browsing report from a silvicultural perspective.”
In principle it is a good procedure.
“But it urgently needs further development,” says Görtler.
He lacks further criteria for tree growth, such as lighting conditions, which can be influenced by thinning trees.
Or paying attention to which trees actually make it to the top.
“If we hunt more, everything will be fine: That’s a huge misconception,” emphasizes the chairman of the hunting association and also points out the “high population pressure” in nature.
In order to bring wildlife and forests into harmony, “cooperation and management” are needed.
Forest owners and hunters are invited to take part in the investigation in their forest, writes the AELF in the statement.
Franz Etschmann from the authority contradicts the hunter Görtler: The damage caused by browsing to the plants would certainly be embedded in an overall context with other factors in the forest.
“The browsing percentages are the basis.
This does not directly indicate a kill rate.”