Forest Day field trip

On Monday I was fortunate enough to attend a field trip up the east coast of Denmark to several protected forests.  The first one we visited was in a Deer Park and was the oldest protected forest in Denmark.  It was filled with beech trees over 1000 years old, but it was kind of an odd forest because there was no underbrush because there are hundreds of deer populating the area that eat any sapling that begins to grow.  What’s funny is the foresters want to keep it that way to continue to attract tourists with the deer populations.  So to keep the population of beech going, the foresters pour a lot of money into fencing saplings in a separate area and then transporting them after 30 years of upkeep (it takes 30 years for a beech to have strong enough bark to withstand a stag’s antlers).  It was quite interesting to hear the extent at which the park goes to to keep the population of deer, and thus the tourists.  Also for the tourists, the park maintains the tree distribution with dynamite, surprisingly enough.  They said that they used dynamite as opposed to a chain saw to get rid of a tree that was in a dangerous location because it looks more natural, so much so that sometimes foresters themselves cannot tell if it fell from lightning or dynamite.  The deer are maintained as well.  They are very comfortable with humans, but if one gets too comfortable, it has to be killed because it could potentially be dangerous for tourists.

I found this stop quite interesting because it is, on one hand, great that the Denmark is protecting these ancient trees so well.  On the other hand, there is very little biodiversity there because of the lack of undergrowth.  The forest is centered around maintaining a population of deer, which are quiet amazing I admit.  There are three species in the park, all very different and exciting to watch, so I understand the draw for tourists and thus the foresters to maintain.

The rest of the day was filled with more forests and discussions of carbon sequestration, biofuels, disease, and more.  What was most fascinating to me, however, was talking to all the interesting people on the trip.  One young woman, Marie Allimant, was from both France and Madagascar.  She now lives in Madagascar and has started a company that is trying to save rainforest there.  She explained that you cannot buy land in Madagascar unless you are a citizen, so  her company takes investments from people around the world and she then buys the forest land for them.  I think it is fantastic what she is doing.  I also met a forester from Benin in western Africa.  He explained that he has had to kill many people on the job to prevent citizens from stealing timber from the forest.  I found this quite shocking, but he explained how necessary it is to keep the forest safe.  He also told me that he can see in his country the desert from the south moving up and that from the north moving down.  He has seen this in the last ten years, and he finds it very worrying.  I met many other interesting people, such as an environmental economist from Korea, a few PhD students from Australia and France, and many others.  It was an extremely enriching day and I loved talking to such knowledgeable people in regards to forests from around the world.  It was a great day.

Lauren Vorhees

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