The head of the German Forestry Council has called for an urgent shift towards mixed forests in response to the severe wildfires burning in Germany and Belgium.
Christian Haase, president of the German Forestry Council, told Deutschlandfunk German public radio on Monday morning that greater precaution was needed.
"And that means for us as forest owners: forest conversion, forest conversion, forest conversion. We must move away from pure conifer stands towards mixed forests," he said.
The fact that outbreaks were now occurring in areas that were typically "wet regions" showed clearly that climate change was advancing, he said. "We must plant plants," said Haase, who is also a conservative member of the German lower house of parliament, or Bundestag.
Forest conversion had been under way for years, he said: "This will certainly take another decade."
It was not possible to simply create vast clear-cut areas from healthy forests, he said. "People are everywhere in the process of planting young trees." If this happened at the wrong time, they would die again, he added.
"So these are processes that take quite some time, and we must tackle them more quickly," he said.