CONSIDER THE CUCKOO CLOCK: TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART TWENTY-SIX

We recently watched The Third Man, a cynical tale of moral relativism filmed entirely in bombed-out Vienna in 1948.  There is a famous line about cuckoo clocks spoken by Orson Wells, the anti-hero Harry Lime:

“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” 

Great line; false premise.  According to the Smithsonian Magazine (Smithsonian Mag):

And though he may have been a genius, Welles was wrong about the history of the cuckoo clock. “When the film came out,” he told Peter Bogdanovich, “the Swiss very nicely pointed out to me that they’ve never made any cuckoo clocks!” Indeed, although often associated with Switzerland, the cuckoo clock was more likely invented in Germany sometime in the 17th century.  I use the word “likely” because the origins of the cuckoo clock are unclear and its invention is still a topic of debate among horologists.

For a long time, the cuckoo clock was attributed to Franz Anton Ketterer, a clock maker of some repute from the Black Forest village of Schönwald [in Bavaria]. It was believed that Ketterer created the cuckoo in the 1730s, inspired by the bellows of church organs to adapt the technology in lieu of the chimes then typically used in clocks…. For such an iconic timepiece, there is surprisingly little written about the cuckoo clock, but, as recently noted by the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, modern scholarship does not support the Ketterer theory. While the full origins of the cuckoo clock remain unknown, evidence dates similar, though more primitive, objects to at least the mid-17th century – around 100 years before Ketterer’s supposed invention. In any case, the familiar cuckoo clock that we know and love today, the clock that hangs in our grandparents’ houses, was certainly developed and refined by the talented craftsman and clock makers of the Black Forest.

Which brings me to my point.  Cuckoo clocks are made of wood, and the Black Forest, so thick with spruce that they block out the sun, historically provided that wood.  Now the Black Forest—the dense woodlands that gave us German Romanticism, Nordic mythology, Wagnerian opera, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, AND the cuckoo clock--is on the brink of environmental collapse.  It’s being eaten alive by bark beetles.  Two years of extremely hot, dry summers followed by warm winters are ideal breeding grounds for bark beetles, which attack spruce more than other trees and are threatening the forest’s very existence.  This is what they look like.

According to an article on bark beetles in ozy.com (ozy): 

Roughly 1,000 beetles can live in a tree at a given time. Each produces about 60 eggs, meaning 60,000 newly hatched beetles can fly out of one tree in the spring.  “If there are three generations, then 6 million beetles can be produced from one tree in one summer season,” says Jörg Ziegler, head forester of the Black Forest National Park. “See the dimension of the problem?”

I do!  And it’s not a one-off thing, either.  It’s a consequence of climate change.  Germany has already seen a temperature increase of 1.5°C. above pre-industrial 1881 levels.  The increase didn’t wait for 2050.  It’s here.  Now.  And, among other things, it threatens forests, timber, and the production of everything made of wood—including the cuckoo clock. 

And it’s not a small thing, either.  Almost one-third of Germany is covered with forests.  Since 2018, more than 1 million established trees have died as a result of drought, fires, winter storms, and bark beetle plagues.  This is a very big deal economically, because the timber industry accounts for about 1.3 million jobs and annual revenue of about $184 million.  It’s suffered a gut punch.  (There is a very good report on this in Deutsche Welle: temperature rise.)

Last August, the situation was so bad that the German army (see the soldier below) was deployed to fell diseased trees early, before the wood became unsalable as timber.  But that massive felling brought a lot of wood onto the market all at the same time, which caused a drastic drop in prices, putting some timber companies out of business and threatening the industry at large.    

At the heart of the bark beetle plague is drought.  In 2018 the navigability of German rivers was severely impaired.  In fact, American friends who booked a Danube cruise last year had to disembark near Dresden and take a bus to Budapest.  (That's the Danube below.)  

Even parts of the Rhine, a major shipping artery that connects the Ruhr Valley manufacturing heart of the country to the North Sea, were affected.  Acres and acres of cornfields outside of Berlin were as brown as wrapping paper and nowhere near as high as an elephant’s eye.   

And there is no end in sight.  As reported in Deutsche Welle (forest collapse): 

Helge Bruelheide, co-director of Germany's Center for Integrative Biodiversity, warned: "If the trend prevails and the annual precipitation sinks below 400 millimeters (15.7 inches) then there will be areas in Germany that will no longer be forestable."

Lüdenscheid, a densely forested area in central Germany, [saw its] precipitation …[decline] from one-meter (39 inches) in 2017 to only 483 millimeters [19 inches] last year.

What … the forestry trade union termed "dramatic tree deaths" began with winter snow dumps in early 2018 which broke branches, weakening the trees' natural defenses and letting in fungal infections," followed by drought and bark beetle infestation" that killed off European spruce trees. 

One million older trees have since died — not only heat susceptible spruces, but even Germany's prized European Red Beech which had been widely planted over the past decade in the hope of creating climate stable forests….

 

Germany is trying various mitigation efforts to save its forests.  The long-term plan is to plant more drought-tolerant species, improve the forest floor’s water-retention capacity, and introduce a variety of species with differing growth requirements.  Some reforestation advocates even go so far as to insist that horses be used instead of heavy machinery to protect the top organic layers of soil and underground rhizome networks that store and distribute nutrients.  Others stress the need to introduce diversity in German forests, whose primeval woods were cleared centuries ago and replaced with faster-growing pines that are less resilient to rising temperatures.  

The German government is on board with funding, partly through the efforts of the Green Party, which was born in 1980 during the last forest crisis, one attributed to pollution.  This year the federal government approved a nearly $889 million forest package.  Per an article in today’s New York Times (German Forests):

Cornelius Meyer-Stork [that's him and his son below] is among the many private foresters who own nearly half of all woodland in Germany. He welcomed the government’s support, pointing out that farmers in the European Union receive about $288 in subsidies for every 2.5 acres they work and are eligible for more if they meet certain requirements. By contrast, he said, “we foresters receive nothing.”

 

In previous years, he opened his forest to allow people to cut down young pines as Christmas trees if they were crowding others. [Germans are credited with starting the tradition of Christmas trees in the 16th century.] He also groomed the paths to set up basic infrastructure and earn certification for his land as a sustainable forest for rest and relaxation.

But after bark beetles ravaged a hillside once covered with pines, Mr. Meyer-Stork was forced to raze the land and sell the damaged wood to make paper or particle board for half of the usual price.

Allocating money to plant trees on a massive scale is all well and good, but will it work?  The native beech trees planted in conifer forests over the last decade because of their hardiness and for diversity have shown signs of climate stress.  The number of German forestry workers over the past 20 years has declined by 50% and more personnel are needed.  Where will the seedlings be planted in an era of urban and suburban sprawl?  And can seedlings survive until they are established in a climate with declining rainfall, battering storms, and explosions of insect populations? 

There is another approach, though, one that turns conventional wisdom on its head.  Again from ozy.com:

Since the creation of Baden-Württemberg’s first and only national park in 2014, [forest managers] are conducting an experiment to see if nature can heal itself if it is left alone. To appease the timber industry, they have created a one-third-mile buffer zone around the perimeter of the 25,000-acre national park. If a tree within the buffer zone becomes infected by beetles, it is cut down, the bark is destroyed and the wood is sold. 

However, if the tree falls inside the park, the rangers leave it and observe how nature handles its wounds. More than 7,000 acres of forest sit inside the observation zone. 

After the beetles have eaten the spruce, there’s more light on the forest floor. The rotting wood becomes a habitat for insects, fungi and lichen. Moor grass, bracken and blueberries take root. Seedlings from rowan berries pop up. In their shade, shade-tolerant species like the silver fir and the beech arrive. New spruce appear. But everything takes time. As the spruce mature, the beetles attack again, but the firs, pines and beech trees can survive for centuries. Left alone, the beetles essentially do the job of the timber industry by clearing away weakened trees. 

 

Interesting approach; false premise?  The beetles are eating the spruce.  But it’s climate change and drought that are weakening them and the other trees.  My experience with seedlings is that they need water, more than they can get from normal precipitation.  (Or should I say abnormal precipitation?)  We planted three young peach trees in Tuscany and all three died within a year because they weren’t watered while we were away over the winter and spring.   My experience with mature trees is much the same.  They need water, too.  This year in Berlin, our street trees developed curled, brown leaves by the beginning of August.  They were so stressed by water shortages this summer that neighborhood groups sprang up to form watering brigades to keep them alive.  I would be curious to know how the $889 million forest package addresses watering young and old trees in the middle of the woods.  Sounds challenging.

 

Queries, worries, and doubts aside, the fact is that we cannot afford to be cynical like Harry Lime.  Let's face it.  We're scrambling here.  We have a crisis on our hands without all the information we need to choose the best mitigation measures.  We have to try everything and see what works and jettison what doesn’t.  We have to consider the cuckoo clock.  If we want it to remain part of our culture, like the Christmas tree, then we have to try our very best to save the Black Forest and every forest.  

Merry Christmas!  By the way, that's our cuckoo clock below.

Keep it real!

Marilyn