The phase of public controversy has begun. Just over a week ago, the Siegen Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) presented a legal opinion. Tenor: A Siegen-Wittgenstein National Park would endanger a long-planned connection road, and nature conservation would threaten to block the urgently needed infrastructure measure. The state government and district administration immediately objected. Both can easily be reconciled. The dispute has dominated local media coverage for days. The idea of a national park in the most forested district in Germany and at the same time in one of the strongest industrial regions on the southeastern periphery of North Rhine-Westphalia has become a bone of contention.
Actually, not so long ago it seemed as if another national park in North Rhine-Westphalia was off the table anyway. When the state government called on the country's regions to apply for the designation of a national park a good two years ago, there was no response. Concerns about restrictions were expressed everywhere. In a national park area, as the Federal Nature Conservation Act stipulates, nature should largely be left to its own devices. The only permitted use is for recreation – and only on designated paths. Nowhere were the political actors able to agree on such a project. Nowhere did anyone want to emulate the Eifel model, where the first NRW national park was established in 2004 and has been celebrated as a model of success ever since.
And so it looked as if the current black-green state government, whose coalition agreement envisages the opening of a second national park, had resigned itself to the fact that nothing would come of it.
But then, six months ago, the news came from the Siegen-Wittgenstein district that they were still considering an application. District Administrator Andreas Müller (SPD) explained what this was all about in an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG in April. After the rejections from the large natural areas such as the Eggegebirge in East Westphalia, the Reichswald on the Lower Rhine or the Rhenish Siebengebirge, people in Siegen-Wittgenstein saw the opportunity for the first time to work on the idea in peace and without competitive pressure.
Müller initiated a process of opinion-forming in which questions were asked. Looking back, the district administrator sees this approach as positive. When asked, he says that the general population has dealt intensively with the topic: “More than 400 questions have been submitted.” Expert committees then answered these questions. A week and a half ago, Müller presented the district council with a draft decision, which will be decided on November 13th. It is still unclear how the vote will turn out.
Müller counts the fact that the IHK, as a representative of the industry, would speak out against it as one of the “reflexive and expected” statements. He considers an IHK survey in which only 322 of 17,500 companies in the region took part and only 135 of them feared disadvantages for the business location to be a weak argument. And as far as concerns about the aforementioned connecting road, the so-called Route 57, Müller refers to assurances from the Ministry of Environment and Transport that a national park does not stand in the way of construction.
But there are other concerns too. Julia Möbus, Managing Director of the Federal Association of the German Sawmill and Wood Industry, is critical if, given the situation that has been tense for years due to drought and bark beetle damage, “another forest would fall out of use”. Because a national park designation of the state forest in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district would result in exactly that: an end to forestry use. Möbus sees a fundamental paradox in this: On the other hand, wooden construction, which works with local and regionally available raw materials, is being pushed as future-oriented and ecological, she says in an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG. As an example, she cites a “timber construction summit” to which the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Agriculture invited on November 6th. “And on the other hand, the country wants to exclude forests from management.”
Matthias Becker also points out contradictions. The forestry scientist is operations manager of the Wittgenstein-Berleburg rent chamber and is therefore responsible for the largest private forest property in North Rhine-Westphalia, some of which borders on the planned national park area. According to the State Forestry Act, the state, says Becker, has a role model role in the management of the areas. “But with a national park, the state is making other forest owners understand: decommissioning is better than managing.”
Becker also points to increasing heat and drought, which has already caused the death of large areas of trees in North Rhine-Westphalia. The situation is often portrayed in such a way that “something new emerges from the ashes on such bare areas like a phoenix,” says Becker. "But that doesn't happen because, given the changing climate conditions, we need tree species that we don't have in the region at the moment. So forests can't regenerate naturally either." A climate-resistant mixed forest “in which trees such as Douglas fir, larch or red oak grow” can only be achieved “through human intervention,” says Becker. But according to the Nature Conservation Act, this is exactly what should not be done in a national park in the long term.
The forestry scientist Christoph Ewers, managing director of a special purpose association of private and municipal forest owners in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district and chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia Community Forest Association, represents a similar point of view. A state forest in particular needs to be managed, he says when asked: "We have to show private forest owners how it can work; how active forest management can work in times of climate change."
Basically, Ewers continues, he appreciates the national park idea. But expelling Siegen-Wittgenstein would not be doing the region any favors. “The idea of helping our forest regenerate with a national park,” he says, “has been overtaken by climate change.”
When District Administrator Andreas Müller made his plan public, he also said that a national park could make the region more attractive for tourists and urgently needed skilled workers. His critics are skeptical. “You can believe in that,” says Christoph Ewers, “but you are taking big risks.” National parks that are well marketed for tourism usually also have other attractions – a lake, for example, or the Nazi “Ordensburg” in the Eifel. In Siegen-Wittgenstein, on the other hand, there isn't much to see other than the forest.
