The Natural Forest Academy

The Natural Forest Academy was founded in 2016 and is an independent research institute. The Academy carries out research and publishes Best Practice. Some research projects we do on our own, some projects we do in collaboration with other institutions and universities. Through our research, we want to raise questions and provide answers around the ecological, climatic and social importance of natural forests. Our work´s aim is also to show the good impact of close-to-nature forest management.

Our core competencies to date are in depth analyses of the German and Central European Forest with a strong focus on ecology. We analyzed different forest ecosystems in Germany and discovered which ones are endangered and where the last remnants are located which need to be put under protection. In our recent study for example we found that about 50 percent of the German forest is far from natural. We found that old trees in Germany are an endangered species. And we found that our forests on average are far too young for a natural ecosystem.

Our second area of expertise is the calculation of potential CO2 storage of forests in Germany and Europe in the next 30 years.

The Natural Forest Academy does classic scientific research but the results are not only presented to the science community – as is usual. We translate our results into easy to understand German for the layman – without complicated forestry or science lingo. With our staff for press and public relations we take care, that our research gets public and reaches a broad audience to fuel the public debate on what kind of forestry we need for the climate, the people and our wildlife.