with @dda-avifauna.bsky.social @vlinderstichting.bsky.social @leibnizlib.bsky.social @foertax.bsky.social @mitforschen.bsky.social, funded by @volkswagenstiftung.de

Das Konfliktfeld Wiederbewaldung - Wilddichte besteht natürlich weiter, aber wir sagen ja nicht, dass alle und sämtliche Störungsflächen hohe Wilddichten beherbergen sollen.

....die Leute sind aber oft begeistert, wenn man ihnen klar macht, wie wichtig Nachtfalterarten doch für die Bestäubung ihrer Blumen sind, oder zweigt wie sich beim nächtlichen Lichtfang Fledermäuse einfinden, die gerade die "schädlichen" Noctuiden wegfangen.

...und die Multifunktionalität von Wäldern ist allgemein akzeptiert (incl. Biodiversitätserhalt). Da hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren/Jahrzehnten doch viel getan.

Wir haben im Forstamt Lauterberg (Hendrik Rumpf ist Mitautor) ausgesprochen aufgeschlossene Kooperationspartner, die biologische Vielfalt verstehen und erhalten wollen. Auch auf Leitungsebene der Landesforsten werden wir bei solchen Studien stark unterstützt...

Funded largely by @umweltstiftung.bsky.social‬, supported by Harz National Park and Niedersächsische Landesforsten.

We conclude that management should aim at diverse management strategies creating vegetation heterogeneity, that is, combining unlogged and salvage-logged sites. Ungulate management should allow access to disturbed areas for browsing and grazing.

Disturbance type, such as windthrow or bark beetle, and post-disturbance management, e.g. salvage logging, both had an effect on community composition.

Higher wild ungulate densities (Red Deer, Roe Deer and Wild Boar) enforced the positive effect of disturbance, especially 12–15 years after disturbance.

Major results: Canopy opening due to tree die-back boosts taxonomic and functional diversity. Consistently more species in young successional stages compared to mature Spruce.

Across 40 sites, over 2 years and 3-4 sampling rounds per year, we caught 52 000 (!) macro-moth specimens of ca. 400 species.

Perhaps for the first time in such a large study, we used live trapping throughout (+some DNA barcoding). The data were entered into an open #citizenscience database and validated by experts: observation.org/users/335304...

Moths are a superdiverse group and have important ecosystem functions. In a large field study in the Harz mountains, we looked into moth responses to the current massive die-back of #Spruce, in a quasi-experimental design.

We used the common bird monitoring data of @dda-avifauna.bsky.social. See here for a press release (in German): www.dda-web.de/aktuelles/me...

Main conclusion: Today, students aged 8 to 21 years are on average 12.2% less familiar with declining bird species than students in 2005. Likely because exposure to some declining species (e.g. the cuckoo on the image) has decreased, but perhaps additionally due to less general exposure to nature.