There is this forest here which is really much enjoy walking my dog in on days when I have a bit more time. It is a bit larger than other forests here but the paths are all very ordently, so you can choose every time if want to make a bend longer on your route, or just make it a bit shorter whenever you feel like it.
That the paths are so squared also means that this is a man made bush, and not really one which is natural from years back. This is just a long existing bush of woods, but surely not one that has its roots back into the middle ages. Honestly, I think no Dutch forest is that old here by now, as they all are under the general forest managing wing of the nature department here.
But when I took the dog for a spin recently, I really saw some action going on which did hurt a little to see, while on the other hand you know it is for the better.
The forest was being shed big time and big machines were driving around in there. Now let's not panic here, this has nothing to do with de-forestation. This has everything to do with keeping the woods healthy and getting enough sunlight in there so the stronger but smaller trees can grow again. But it does look shitty for sure!
The majority of this forest is needle-leaved trees and oak trees. Currently the price of oakwood here is actually really high, so I can also understand the incentive of chopping down some of these ones and selling the wood which is then all of a sudden a local product. This ofcourse versus having to import wood from somewhere tropical with all of the import costs and environmental impacts from that.
As you see some serious logs are coming from this and they are actually really useful I guess.
Another reason of that I don't mind that these oaks are going down is the problem in Holland here which we have with the processionary caterpillar (which I wrote a post back about in the Steem days and I can not seem te find anymore here when searching through Hive, we got to get that fixed somehow) and these caterpillars live in oak trees.
In summertime they shed their hairs and these itch and burn and actually can be quite dangerous if you are exposed to them too much. I don't have the feeling these caterpillars will be gone next summer, but having less oaks in this forest will keep the bugger away a bit more for sure.
It is not like half of this forest is down all of sudden, because there is actually way more sunlight coming into to bodem which was the whole purpose of chopping down these 'bonus-trees'. And with the needle-leaved trees and pines which are still there, be forest actually looks greener because these trees are more of the ever-greeners.
But I get it, when seeing all of this on the ground, it feels sad...Even though the smaller branches are left here so they can rot and all turn into soil again, it doesn't feel right. But it is....sometimes what we see doesn't strike with how it feels, but it is all for the better.
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