Wooden

There is often confusion amongst non-Germans as to the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) and the Bavarian Forest (Bayerische Wald).

The 6,000 km² Black Forest is not in Bavaria but in our neighbour state Baden-Württemberg bordering France, famous for cuckoo clocks & its cherry cake, the delight of Berni Inn diners in the 70s with their Gateaux dessert.

The Bavarian Forest is about 500 km to the East on the opposite side of Germany along the Czech border. Unlike its cousin, it doesn't have a strictly defined area but is generally accepted, at least by the tourism people, as also being 6,000 km². However, together with the adjoining forest on the Czech side called the Bohemian Forest, it forms the largest joined forest area in middle Europe.

Something that also confuses even Germans is that the general Bavarian Forest also contains the 242 km² Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany's first ever (1970). Together with the Czech Šumava National Park, they form one of the biggest such protected areas.

Bavaria though has 25,600 km² of forest (which would be the 145th biggest country), with 5 billion trees 55% owned privately, 30% by Bavarian State, 13% by Parishes & 2% by the German State. The Bavarian State has responsibility for overseeing all forests and helping all owners to deal with the trials & tribulations of forest management.

More specifically, the Bavarian State has a State Forestry Commission who manage the State's forests and they are the people we have the most to do with as they border our property.

Today a walk through their forest & now the work that has been going on is coming to an end. The chief forester has now marked all the various piles with "tickets" as shown on the main photo. This particular pile is destined for a company called UPM, a Finnish forestry company with global interests & increasingly moving into ecological uses of wood in all sorts of areas including chemicals & medicines.

The extra photo shows three sorted "piles" at the top. On the bottom row, the UPM 2m logs & their name on the inside of the ticket. In the middle row, a 4m length pile for a local wood mill belonging to Ilim Timber, a leading European sawn timber concern based in Russia but also with mills in Germany.  The middle right photo is a pile of "leftovers" that will either be sold to private people to get out whatever they can for fire wood or to contractors/companies who will make wood chips.

Statistically, there is 2,000m² forest for every Bavarian citizen. I wonder if that means I don't need to have a bad conscience about still running a 17-year-old diesel SUV? On a serious note, the forest plays a very important part of Bavarian everyday life and is a "treasure" that must be preserved for Europe & the World.