It’s not pretty: the forest in the Harz Mountains is currently a dead spruce forest. A ranger guides tourists in September 2023 and explains: “The forest will change now.” © Dietrich Cornelius

The forest in the Harz should develop on its own

The ranger in the Harz National Park doesn’t call it climate change, he just says: “It’s got warmer.” A climate that spruce trees don’t like at all. The spruce is a tree of the highlands. The fact that there are so many spruces in the lowlands of Germany is due to the fact that humans have been helping them to grow for about 2000 years. Spruces grow relatively fast and their timber was sold to mines and cities early on. Most of the spruce forest in the Harz Mountains was commercially exploited. This has changed since the forest area became a national park in 2006. The nature reserve around the Brocken is one of the largest forest national parks in Germany – but currently the forest is not doing well.

The national park’s website states:

“Storms, heat waves and drought as a result of climate change are weakening the trees. Bark beetles, the beneficiaries of this weakness, are causing large-scale dieback of the mostly human-dominated, older spruce forests in the national park area.”

But this should be seen as a new beginning. In about 30 years, there will be an entirely new forest here.

The forest national park is now changing

• In the higher elevations, new young spruce trees are now growing, where it is naturally native. The national park expects spruce to remain the main tree species here. However, some deciduous trees such as willow, mountain ash, and sycamore maple are also becoming established.
• At lower altitudes, deciduous trees predominate. Here the spruce will disappear. Although the primary goal is for the forest to develop on its own, the national park helps with sporadic plantings. As the ranger explains, beech trees would grow here naturally, which is why they are being partly planted.
• The dead wood is left lying around. It offers shelter to a wide variety of forest dwellers, and so the seemingly dead is already full of life again.

The Harz National Park looks pretty bad right now – but you can see it as an opportunity and watch the new wilderness being created. Your children will experience the Harz forest in a completely different way!