Part of the popular mountain bike path at Gieten has been closed for the time being. Cyclists must temporarily detour via an adjacent hiking trail. The reason: hundreds of dead sparrings that fall over. Yet the trees are not cut down.
The culprit is the letter setter, a beetle that has affected and killed large numbers of spruce in a short time. Many of these trees are now loose in the ground and can just make off. Although Staatsbosbeheer wants to intervene, it is quiet. It is not that Staatsbosbeheer does not want to remove the trees. It simply is not allowed.
That has everything to do with a lawsuit that played at the end of 2024. Six nature organizations, including the Bomenbond, objected to the national code of conduct for forest management. They thought that there was too large -scale cutting, the so -called bare cover. The organizations went to court. The administrative court in Arnhem partly agreed with them on December 22. The code of conduct was declared invalid and with that also an exemption disappeared with which forest managers were previously allowed to grub up to 0.5 hectares per forest compartment. A forest compartment covers an average of 9 hectares and is classified on the basis of the underlying soil. For each course it is determined which trees and plants thrive there and the planting is tailored to that.
“The code of conduct stated that we can cut up to a maximum of 0.5 ha,” says Aaldrik Pot of Staatsbosbeheer. “We could use that to make the mountain bike path safe here again. But the judge has determined that that is no longer allowed. We also do not know whether that rule will be back in. So until that time we have to come up with a different solution.”