Our forest - richer in structure and closer to nature Our wood - sustainable and certified
The City of Chemnitz owns around 1,500 hectares of forest. At its meeting today, the City Council decided to implement the forest management plan for the years 2015 to 2024 for these forest areas. The forest management plan includes recording the current state of the forest, planning for the next ten years and monitoring sustainability.
In Chemnitz, too, it is important to utilise the renewable raw material wood according to modern silvicultural knowledge and market economy developments, to prepare the forest for changes in the climate, to take into account the interests of nature conservation and at the same time to make it available to the city's recreation-seeking population for a variety of leisure activities. Achieving this harmonisation of forest functions is not always easy. However, such multifunctionality of the forest is particularly in demand and necessary in urban forests. The present planning work for the 2015 to 2024 forest management period provides an essential basis for this.
The inventory of the Chemnitz municipal forest has shown that the timber stock has increased by around 18 % over the past ten years, that the proportion of stands over 100 years old has increased by 50 % and that the forest stands have become more structurally diverse. The composition of tree species has also become more natural. The proportion of conifers in the upper stand (tree layer) has fallen overall from 49 % to 44 %. In particular, the proportion of spruce, Weymouth pine and Norway spruce has decreased and the proportion of native deciduous tree species such as sycamore and copper beech has increased.
The need for forest reorganisation and the ecological requirements to use our own renewable and sustainably produced raw materials make it necessary and the increased timber supply and high current growth make it possible to moderately increase the felling on the commercial areas. Around 25 % of the current timber growth will continue to be harvested. This ensures the sustainability of utilisation in relation to the timber supply. To ensure that timber utilisation is also sustainable from a nature conservation and species protection perspective, the Parks Department, which maintains and manages the municipal forest, has set itself the following goals for the next ten years, among others:
- to continue to refrain from clear-cutting as a matter of principle
- to limit the felling of native deciduous tree species appropriate to the location to measures required for traffic safety in the area of natural monuments
- to reduce the proportion of North American red oak in the medium and long term, including outside of natural monuments
- attempt to adapt forest stands to climate change by initially using native tree species
- to refrain from planned timber harvesting in all forests in the city of Chemnitz during the bird breeding and rearing season (1 March to 31 August each year). Exceptions are traffic safety measures or exceptional events such as wind breakage or bark beetle infestation.
Some of these points go beyond the FSC® standard. FSC® stands for "Forest Stewardship Council®". The FSC®, which could be translated as "Council for Forest Stewardship", created a certification system for sustainable forest utilisation that includes ten globally applicable principles that guarantee that wood and paper products bearing the FSC seal originate from responsibly managed forests. This means that the city of Chemnitz is also setting standards throughout Saxony in this area.