A new era for the German wood industry as the proportion of spruce drops in the new forests

Climate change has hit Germany with full force over the past five years. Storms, extreme drought, and bark beetles have, since the drought year of 2018, killed more than 500,000 hectares of forest, and 255 million m3 of damaged timber has been emergency felled. The extent of the damage is estimated to amount to around 20 billion euros, and approximately 20 percent of the entire spruce volume has been harvested. Bark beetle clearcuts correspond to about 5 percent of the total forest area in Germany. The damages are concentrated around a belt through central Germany, from Saxony in ...