"All wise forest management must...have woodlands appreciated...

and endeavor to utilize them

as much as possible, but in such a way that later generations will be able to derive at least as
much benefit from them as the present generation claims for itself."

Serge Ludwig Hartig (1786)

Senior Forstmeister
Prussian State Government
Organizer of the Prussian Forest Service

"Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

World Commission on Environment and Development (1987)

Above citations are 200 years apart. Both of them originated at critical junctures in the
history of resource management. They are virtually identical, possibly reflecting that we may have
strayed from the original vision, and are in the process of correcting for the detour.

Forestry these days is clearly not business as usual. Worldwide, the profession finds
itself challenged from within and without. The call for a "new", mature forestry is accompanied by
an unprecedented whirlwind of new terminology, and attempts at defining both this vocabulary
and a vision of the future. In scanning the emerging landscape and the road ahead, America may
want to capitalize on mistakes made by others. In this respect, more than 200 years of forestry
evolution in Central Europe, the cradle of scientific forestry, may be particularly relevant. As a
reader in a letter to the editor of the Journal of Forestry rightfully put it a few years back, "Turning
a blind eye to the history of foresty in Germany cost that country dearly in a lesson twice learned"
(Turner 1992).

HISTORY OF THE DAUERWALD

What Turner implies is the almost 80 year old off and on debate concerning the
"Dauerwald" (DW). This German word literally means "permanent" or "perpetual forest"In simple
terms, the DW constitutes guidelines for natural forest management.. Its recent adoption by #??
states, is guiding a far-reaching transition from "traditional" commodity-based resource
management to "new forestry", the emphasis not only on sustainable production, but also on
qualitatively superior, environmentally sound, biologically diverse, and socially responsive forests.
This transition is timely with respect to meeting the challenge of "sustainable development", as
outlined by the Brundlandt Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987),
and subsequently substantiated by several international agreements resulting from the Rio Earth
Summit. (Heissenbuttel et al. 1994?).

Pre-Dauerwald

To properly interprete the emergence of the DW concept, a brief survey of early forest
history in Central Europe is indispensable. Scientific forestry as it evolved in the 17th Century,
was the response to looming timber shortages (Leopold 1936 a; Klose 1985; Plochmann 1992),
resulting from unregulated exploitation of natural resources in an age of rapid industrialization and
growing human populations. The challenge was to quickly return understocked forest and
degraded land to greater timber production. The answer was fast-growing, undemanding Scotch
pine (Pinus silvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies), mostly grown plantation-style,
irrespective of the natural distribution of these species. The result was a major shift in species
composition of German forests, from originally about two thirds hardwoods to two thirds conifers.
This reconstruction of forests was essentially very successful, at least in its initial stages.
 Concurrent with the rise of technology and scientific methodology, early forest
management systems were mechanistic and systematic. Disenchantment with the newly created
"wood factories", however, started to be expressed at least as early as 1824 (von der Borch) and
Koenig (1849), who, addressed issues of forest esthetics and forest health, and Gayer (1886),
who demanded a return to mixed forests growing on healthy soil. The high price for timber, the
cheap labor, and probably a degree of professional complacency, however, allowed continuation
of this system, which by then was also being adopted widely in other parts of the world, including
North America (Leopold 1936b; Butler 1974). Forestry became a business which very heavily
relied on intensive nursery production, hand planting, weeding as well as clear cutting, and
required frequent interventions to prevent or correct damage from various insects, diseases,
game, wind, fire, and snow.

The Baerenthoren Dauerwald

In the 1880s, Friedrich von Kalitsch, owner of a forest estate at Baerenthoren in Saxony-
Anhalt (?) not far from Berlin, decided to attempt to deviate from established procedure. In
attempts to upgrade his pine forests, which suffered from soil fatigue following decades and
centuries of unbridled exploitation, he did this and that (.....). Within a few decades he created an
essentially new forest with demonstrably healthier soil, a more benign microclimate, and a forest
that also pleased the eye. Such subjective judgements were subsequently substantiated by
evidence from yield studies, indicating "double the increment set as standard for this site quality"
(Leopold 1936a).

The Moeller Dauerwald

Influenced by several writers, including Gayer (1886)......., by impressions gained at

Baerenthoren, as well as by personal observations made in natural forests of North America and
the Amazon, professor A...Moeller, a forest mycologist (?), was apparently (?) the first to use the
term DW, and to conceptualize its refererence points and potential significance. His book
(1922????) unleashed a storm in the forest establishment, which precipitated a flood of other
publications and heated discussions between traditionalists and reformers for years, during which
Baerenthoren became a Mecca for the DW movement (Bode 1992). Despite continuing
skepticism in certain circles of the forest establishment, the DW became the guiding principle for
(public??) forests in Germany in 1934.

One year later, Aldo Leopold happened to spend four months studying "deer mania" or
game-forest conflicts in Germany.This led him to conclude that resource management as
historically practised in Central Europe, presented a "plain case of mutual interference between
game and forestry", "that better silviculture is possible only with a radical reform in game
management" and that " better game management is possible only with a radical change in
silviculture" (Leopold 1936 a). For him, the newly mandated DW suggested an elegant
compromise of better production in the long run, in conjunction with "other indices of ecological
health". Attempts at implementing the DW in Germany, however, proved short-lived. Only three
years after its inception, under the leadership of a non-forester (a political appointee), influenced
by a powerful hunting lobby headed by no less than Hermann Goering, the ....and "Imperial
Hunting Master", and dictated by pressures of an economy preparing for war, the DW policy was
repealed.

The contemporary Dauerwald

In 1950, a "Working Group for Nature-friendly Forest Management" revived the DW idea.
Main support for this group arose from a number of large private forest owners (their main driving
force???). Until the 1980s, however, the DW remained marginalized as a historic footnote, until a
number of events conspired to revive it. Foremost among these was an economic crisis in
forestry, brought on by Germany's extremely high labor and social costs, and exacerbated by
international market forces. Another stimulus came from the well publicized effects of
"Waldsterben", a complex forest disease triggered primarily by air pollution, and made significant
by several stressors, (notably soil compaction, acidification, insects, root disease, windthrow, and
snow breakage), the magnitude of which to a great extent were attributable to traditional forestry
practices. By this time an affluent, well educated, "green" public in a nation where virtually no land
is farther than an hour's drive from a major city (Schabel 1980, 1985), increasingly politicized
these issues and rallied around "save the forests", and "back to nature" themes. In 1989 in
Slovenia, "Pro-silva" was founded by the Association of European Foresters Practicing
Management which Follows Natural Processes (Anon 1996), an initiative which essentially
promotes Dauerwald ideals. Considering Europe's strong committment to implementing
sustainable development in general, and restoring its increasingly threatened biodiversity, the DW
this time, a century after its inception, may finally become permanent after all.

PRINCIPLES OF THE DAUERWALD

The original proposal

In his book, Moeller (1922) interpreted forests as organisms, which can express their inherent
vigor and productivity only, if all parts are healthy, somewhat analogous to Leopold's "first rule of
intelligent tinkering" as requiring the "keeping of all parts". This obviously implied a retooling of
species diversity to restore forests which in the course of age-old exploitation, and the
development of age-class forestry, had experienced major downward shifts in the composition,
structure and diversity of fauna and flora, and concomitant influences on microclimate and soil
degradation (Forstaufbau zu umbau). Being a mycologist, Moeller took particular pains to
expound on the significance of healthy soils

Contemporary interpretations (why doesn't name stick? naturnah, naturgemaess, analog, nature-
oriented, ecological, seminatural, sustainable forest=permanent, durable)

(Range of interpretations from preservation to conservation; The promise of

profitability(costanza 1997); higher quality, beauty, diversity, structure, arguments against DW;
deromanticize; "the Germans now realize that increment bought at the expense of soil health,
landscape beauty, and wildlife is poor economics as well as poor policy." (Leopold 1936b). Few
data yet

CONCLUSIONS

Implications for Europe (sacrificial Transition; relate to Moeller's 5 principles and expand in
modern view; increase biodiversity i.e. hardwood/conifer reversal, rare species, serving species,
reduce exotics; low impact technology, low chemical input, silviculturally without clearcuts
compose not construct, uneven-aged, indigenous natural repro, genetic breadth; wildlife
management, deer reductions; focus on Waldpflege, not regeneration; umbau verlangt Pflege
durch Einzelbaumwirtschaft, natural regeneration, and Vorbau, d.h. Zeit, Geduld und langfristiges
Denken). Eat your cake and eat it too; or resolving the conservation production dilemma.
Flexibilitaet

Application in North America? (Popes of monoculture won't like; Menominee not all though;
Leopold 1936 b; quality deer management; differences with Europe; industries developed around
early successional species both planted and vegetatively reproduced pioneer types pine and
aspen; America more fire climate and adapted vegetation; present paradigm shift; DW and
ecosystem management; land ownership more federal and large private (1997 collaborative
stewardship; issues of intergenerational responsibility and land ethic; bonanza for research;
application in tropics)

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