Week 6 from the Fatherland

The days keep rollin’ on here in Germany.
Of course I’m continuing to monitor the movement of wild boar across the 625 acres of our Nature Conserve. Since about 1/4th of the land is adjacent to fields and we are responsible for the Wildschaden- wild game damage to the crops, a good amount of our time is spent trying to keep animals in the forest and away from the fields. The forest has wild game clocks that help track the movements and specific times of wild boar and the footprints they leave in the moist dirt of this area let us know about how old and how many there are in a group. The forest land adjacent to fields is lined with high seats and hunters sit according to where this information we gather leads us to believe they are most likely to be. It’s my hope that my analysis of the Wild Uhren will shed further light on this.
I spent this weekend mainly doing trail management with Julias who originally hails from the Slovakia. He has a manner to him that breaths comrade and likes to give you a strong whack on the shoulder when telling an especially good part of his stories. I thoroughly enjoy his company and working with him. All the while we worked and moved from path to path clipping off overhanging branches he talks and gives helpful relevant hints. On how to best talk to the farmers when they complain of the damage done by the animals, on Jagdsprache- the language of the hunters that really seems to be a old language of its own where the words match up not at all with either my German or English skills, on which plants to cut and how while where doing this trail work, so they won’t return next season in the same place, and generally just what goes on in these parts and the inner workings of the Revier.
There is a large area of forest on our Nature Preserve that we sometimes drive thru but rarely stop at and then only to quickly observe something. The area is called Bannen Wald and until a little while ago I just thought of it as a name. This past week I was told that it is the area of the Nature Preserve that is not allowed to be touched in any way. You cannot log trees in the area or change it in anyway. This makes sense because the name actually means Banned Forest. I look forward to exploring this area further and am going to take some pictures to try to capture it. There are very few places left in the densely populated Germany that are considered wild.

Nils Bell