Energy wood from strictly protected area
A Swiss Emerald Network is being logged for energy wood
If you thought that international conventions protected Swiss nature reserves, then think again.
According to a complaint submitted to the Secretariat of the Bern Convention by Biofuelwatch in 2023, Switzerland’s Belpau Emerald Network is being radically logged year after year, primarily for energy wood production.
The Emerald Network, which forms a lattice of nature reserves spanning central Europe and the EU, aims to protect designated natural habitats and endangered wild plants and animals. The irony is that this network was set up under the Bern Convention, which was adopted in the Swiss capital in 1979.
Switzerland counts 40 Emerald Network sites dotted around the country which are managed at the national and cantonal levels. The 436-acre Belpau is located in the canton of Bern and extends 10 km upriver from the Swiss capital following both banks of the River Aare. It overlaps several smaller reserves and an alluvial zone of “national importance” and forms part of the larger Aarelandschaft Thun-Bern cantonal Nature Reserve which links the cities of Bern and Thun.
According to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN); “every effort must be made” to ensure the protection of both Emerald Network species and habitats “which must not be threatened in any way”.
According to the complaint however, logging occurs along the entire length of the Belpau and into the cantonal Nature Reserve beyond. Interventions are carried out regularly and periodically, often several times a year, and they are growing in frequency and scale thereby endangering protected Emerald habitats and species. The complaint also “questions the lack of a management and monitoring plan for the Emerald Network site and denounces the responsibility delegated to the cantons by the Swiss government for the management of these sites, alleging an inconsistency with the commitments made under the Bern Convention.” You can read the full complaint here.
This picture taken on 4 May 2022, shows two of the 11 trailer-loads of Emerald Network wood chipped that day. This amounts to 22 tractor-trips through the reserve, plus more for the chipper and deprived the reserve’s inhabitants of some 268 m3 of wood.
Health and Forest calls on all logging to be halted in Swiss nature reserves. If trees have to be removed for safety reasons or in order to make a site more biodiverse, then the felled trees should be left in situ for the plants, animals and fungi.
March 2024