According to the federal nature reserve, maintenance work may be carried out on trees and shrubs in the open landscape from October 1 to February 29. During this period, the road construction administration maintains the bushes and hedges that have grown too high over the years, obstruct the view or protrude into the carriageway. In the medium term, the practice of "up-stocking", i.e. cutting the shrubs around ten centimetres above the ground, which was practised until a few years ago, will be replaced by selective maintenance. This involves promoting individual trees within defined sections by removing neighboring plants. This allows a new generation of plants to develop in the resulting bare spaces. What may sometimes seem like radical clear-cutting actually serves as a life-sustaining and rejuvenating maintenance measure for the plants, from which they quickly recover. By proceeding in sections, small animals and insects have the opportunity to adapt to the new situation and are given enough space to retreat to in the untouched adjacent areas. In addition to the goal of being able to establish ecologically valuable old-growth stands that characterize the landscape by selectively promoting individual trees, the selection of the remaining wood species also plays an increasingly important role with regard to adaptation to climate change.
In addition to extensive maintenance, the felling of severely damaged individual trees is a second component of the wood maintenance work this year. In addition to ash dieback, which has been rampant for several years, sooty bark disease, which is also caused by fungal spores, has been causing severe damage to maples since the dry period in 2018. This damage poses major challenges for both forestry and the road maintenance service. Both infections cause the infected trees to die completely, which leads to a high risk of branches and trunks breaking and thus poses a high risk to pedestrians and drivers, especially on paths. This risk is reduced by the tree maintenance work.
The district administration office asks road users for their understanding in advance for any resulting traffic obstructions.
