Protecting Nature inside the Forest

Compliance with international and national resolutions on protecting our natural heritage requires that the wilderness approach encompasses more than just one large reserve and a number of wilderness nucleuses. It has to spread. Wilderness needs buffer zones and animals need room to roam in order to develop populations that are able to survive.

For this reason, nature is actively protected also in those forests of North-Rhine-Westphalia that are used economically by focussing on sustainable mixed forests, the protection of nesting trees and specific forestal habitats, the careful usage of harvesting machines, the preservation of the diversity of different types of trees and by not removing old and dead wood. "Xylobius" is a programme that exemplifies how the forest industry and the preservation of ecological structures can be integrated to protect nature.