Bergwaldprojekt

Description

Bergwaldprojekt is a German nonprofit association that organizes volunteer work weeks to protect, preserve and restore forests and other ecosystems.

It grew out of an international mountain forest project founded in Switzerland in 1987. German activities began in 1991 and were formalized as an independent association in Germany in 1993. It is based in Wurzburg and works across Germany, from the Alps and mid-mountain ranges to island and coastal forests on the Baltic Sea.

Volunteers take part in one-week assignments doing forest and young-growth maintenance, reforestation, protective-forest work, fence and trail construction, erosion control, landscape and biotope care, and peatland restoration. The organization works only on public forests or land held by charitable bodies, and in Germany its projects focus especially on converting monoculture stands into more natural, climate-resilient forests. It runs around 100 project sites and involves roughly 1,500 volunteer days in parallel each year.

It also runs a forest school and works with businesses on corporate engagement and volunteering. Since 1991 it says more than 50,000 volunteers have taken part, planting around six million trees and caring for more than 2,500 hectares of forest and other habitats.