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As is often the case when I’m in a place full of foreigners, I try and spend as much time visiting their national parks. Germany has about a dozen. All relatively small, for the obvious reasons that Germany isn’t really all that big and they didn’t get into the NP business until very late in the 20th Century. Still, at least they are trying.
First park I hit was Muritz. Basically woodland and lakes. Nice, pastoral. Might be a state or county park in the US.
There are several little towns within the park. I think they are trying to acquire some of the private property as it becomes available. Below an abandoned dairy barn and church. Also, their national parks seem to allow logging, at least in some of them do.
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I would imagine German NP’s are much like those in the UK in having largely planted areas of forest. In the UK the logging is part of a management program which partly funds the NP. Here, there is also a program of replacing the pine and spruce which was planted 100+ yrs ago with the natural range of hardwoods and broad leaf species the island would have had before agriculture took over. The hope is to increase the biodiversity which always suffers when a monoculture is planted. (This is counter-acted by a recent government approval of using some greenbelt land for house building – Urrg!)
Probably the case. I don’t know how the NPs are managed in Germany. They have many of the trappings of US NPs, smokey the bear hats, etc. do it’s clear they used the US for a model in some respects.
It’s just an odd sight to see in a NP, but my reference point is perhaps unfair.