Tree felling causes many emotions. This became clear once again yesterday in the Emmerhout district in Emmen. Residents there responded with indignation to the felling of about a thousand trees in the adjacent Emmerdennen. Where do those emotions come from?
In recent weeks, Staatsbosbeheer had large and small trees cut down here and there in a forest section on the Emmerhout side. Forest ranger Linde Veldhoen described it as ‘light regular maintenance’. But local residents were furious. “I think the felling was done indiscriminately,” said someone. “I have the feeling that Staatsbosbeheer mainly needed money. Pure profit motive,” another suggested that planks will be made from the trees.
David Kleijn, professor of Plant Ecology and Nature Management at Wageningen University, often hears such reactions when trees have been cut down. “Trees mean something special to people. A tree is very recognizable and has sometimes been in place for a long time. In addition, people are inherently conservative, they are used to certain things and would like to keep it that way.”
This also became apparent in the Emmerhout district, where major questions were raised about the felling of trees. “It has a huge impact if you cut down a piece of forest, even if it is for very good reasons,” Kleijn realizes. “The first primary reaction is emotional. The joke is that if you ask those people five years later what they think, most will say that the new situation is also nice.”
According to the Emmerdennen forester, the felling of trees was carried out to create space for new nature. “If they let this become a normal forest again, it will look really beautiful again in five years,” Kleijn also expects. “Then you really have that young forest, very varied. And if a few trees have remained in that area, it is extra beautiful. Then you see the contrast very clearly between those large trees and all that young stuff in between.”
According to Kleijn, one more or less tree does not make a big difference for nature in Drenthe and the rest of the country. “I always say: we have never had as many trees as we have at the moment. About 150 years ago there were hardly any trees in the Netherlands, because the trees were used as firewood and construction wood. People didn’t have to make a cent, so that wood was brought from everywhere.”
Nature in Drenthe also looked very different at that time. Kleijn: “I was told that during that period you could see the Martini Tower from Assen. Every generation gets used to something different. We secretly think that it has always been this way, but of course that is not the case at all.”