A conversation with Andrejs Svilāns, Director General of the Nature Conservation Agency (part one*)
Everything related to nature and trees “happened” gradually. If you live in the countryside (as I did), the school is 7 km away, the bus may or may not run, and you often end up walking – some days: 7 km there, 7 km back! I also spent my summers in the countryside; I had crawled through every forest and ditch, dug through old war trenches, and I was on first-name terms with nature! At one point, however, my great love was chemistry. While no one ever called me crazy for my interest in nature, it did happen regarding chemistry! Moreover, until I started learning chemistry at school, I hadn't heard anything good from older friends, only stories about “what a horror chemistry is”! But I had a great teacher, Maija Sprūdža! I read the book “General Chemistry” (about 700 pages) “from cover to cover” three times. My interest was there and it only deepened! I participated in the republic’s chemistry Olympiads, but in the 11th grade, the call of the wild won out! I enrolled in the Faculty of Biology at the University of Latvia as a scholarship holder for the “Kalsnava” forest research station, but when I returned from military service, everything was falling apart, and I was told that “there are no claims and never will be, but the assignment and the scholarship are no longer valid!”. So my path led me to the botanical garden in Salaspils. I met Raimonds Cinovskis, who was then the head of the Dendroflora Department at the Botanical Garden of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, who had heard that I knew a thing or two about dendrology. Seeing the Salaspils arboretum collection of woody plants, my jaw dropped! As R. Cinovskis later remarked, he, in turn, was pleasantly surprised by the fact that a student knew so many Latin names of trees and recognized a few rarer foreign woody plants. That is how my career began at the Salaspils Botanical Garden.
Botany and dendrology were and are taught very well at the Faculty of Forest! Why be surprised?
The point was about exotic species that are less known in Latvian conditions! Starting from high school, I read a lot of Artūrs Mauriņš’s “Engaging Dendrology” with its excellent illustrations; it had previously been published in installments by the magazine “Draugs”! In 1993, I finished my studies at the University of Latvia and received a scholarship to study in Germany, where I spent six months as a guest student at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn (studying landscape planning, hydrotechnical measures in landscape planning, and ancient art) and six months at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Bonn was a huge gain for me in terms of cultural history: I studied the history of garden and park art inside and out in the rich library of the Institute of Cultural History. I spent a lot of time in gardens and parks; the experience and knowledge were useful later at the botanical garden and while working in old manor parks and other dendrological plantings – if one lacks an understanding of the history of garden and park art, one can only cause trouble with “bare dendrology”. This knowledge is still useful today!
The most harrowing memories are of the German language: you study it from the fourth grade at school, study it for four years at university, go to Germany, and… for the first month you want to “run away”. I understood very little! Dialects, not exactly the “vivid educated” language. It was hard to get used to! In three months, my language became at least somewhat “usable”. In Berlin, I learned about nursery management; my big “dendrological university” was the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and the Späth-Arboretum. Speaking of the latter, the botanical garden in Salaspils was originally founded on the basis of the C.W. Schoch nursery collection, which since the second half of the 19th century had been a transhipment point for plant material from Western Europe to the European part of Tsarist Russia. And the Späth-Arboretum was one of the closest partners of the Schoch nursery!
I started in Salaspils as a biologist (in reality – a worker with biology skills).
How is biodiversity doing in Latvia?
Biodiversity is a broad, all-encompassing concept. There are strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps that is why we are caught in the crossfire of conflicting opinions. Some say that foresters and loggers are bad. Foresters say that biologists and other “crazy greens” are bad. The truth lies in the middle! Furthermore, it is important to know which species we are talking about! The ongoing so-called “nature census”, which is still continuing, will largely show the actual current picture – there will be species that can be removed from the list of protected species, and there will be species that need to be added! It is a natural process!
When talking about biodiversity, is it forgotten that we are talking about living nature and an environment that is changing?
Everything flows, everything changes – nature included. If we talk about changes in the quality and quantity of species and habitats, undoubtedly one of the components is climate change. We can argue: how natural or artificial they are. For example, looking at history, 14,000 years ago our territory was covered by thick ice, which gradually melted, and the first plants appeared here, followed by the first animals. When reindeer appeared, the first nomadic hunter tribes appeared too. What we understand today and call our (Latvian) nature has developed through all this time by the interaction of natural processes and human activity. There has been a warm Atlantic period, there has been a little ice age. It will be as it will be!
If we accept the theory that climate change is shifting towards “warmer”, conifers will feel “worse”! Pine will not have problems, but spruce will, which we are already observing! After the hot, dry summers in Western Europe, it is obvious; here, discussions about the scale of the problem are still ongoing! The fact that spruces weakened by drought and affected by the European spruce bark beetle are already a frequent component of our landscape is undeniable! In Latvia, of course, we don’t have the situation seen in Germany or Ukraine, but!!!! One must keep their eyes and ears open and watch what is happening! We must not sleep through the situation where “it will be too late to break the bark beetle’s teeth”.
Not sleeping through it…. When should we wake up?
Monitoring! It would be excellent if the State Forest Service carried out overall supervision of all forests. But I also understand its limited capacity. We observe the territories under our management (NCA), for now, we are finding small outbreaks of bark beetles; in any case, the situation is not like in Germany. German colleagues say: “we haven't been doing normal forestry for three years because we can't just clear the damaged spruce from the forests!” At what point and what we will do (in Latvia) is a question for forest entomologists and pathologists! The NCA consults both “Latvijas valsts meži” and “Silava” on the placement of pheromone traps. From the perspective of biodiversity conservation, a dry spruce is “gone and forgotten”: the bark beetles will move away, and there will be something else in their place. But – we want to be responsible towards other forest owners! The biggest problem is private forest owners, who perhaps in many places are “living happily, hoping that in 20-30 years they will be able to successfully harvest their forest and…”, without knowing that the forest might already be “blown away”…
What influence does such a warm winter have in this regard?
From experience at the botanical garden! I became director in 2006; on January 15, 2007, I received a call from Radio Baltcom: “Botanical garden? Svilāns? Tell me, what is going on here?” On January 15, Ledebour and Daurian rhododendrons were blooming. This year (2020), in the botanical garden in Salaspils, these same rhododendrons had a few flowers, but at the “Babīte” rhododendron nursery and in some private gardens in Riga, they bloomed quite lushly! It seems nice, but if a frost comes, even two- and three-year-old shoots can get frostbitten!
The question was about the bark beetle and the warm winter – what does it give to the insect?
The question is intended for forest entomologists! On the one hand, bark beetles might feel better in the warmth. On the other hand – perhaps the natural enemies of bark beetles feel “just as better”. Similar to ticks – experience shows that a warm or cold winter is not the only limiting factor. In the context of climate change, one should not think only about the bark beetle, but also about possible new pest species and diseases… The Spanish slug, for example!
The 2019 insect isn't “local” either!
Exactly!... If we are talking about climate variability, the question is: what can we do collectively and individually to reduce the changes! The second is: we must think about how to save our own and our collective “backside”! What will we do if the water level rises, if dry and hot summers become the norm, if late spring frosts start to regularly “bite” the fields and gardens, if … If in forestry we have to forget the spruce as a species, what will we put in its place?!
Beech…
There you go! The Latvian Dendrologists’ Society’s tree of the year for 2020. Beech can partially be considered an invasive exotic species, although its natural range is relatively close to Latvia, so as the climate gets warmer, it should “arrive” here anyway! Another thing – if we plant beech trees on a mass scale – there is almost nothing alive in the undergrowth beneath them. So the discussion is still ahead! For example, in Germany’s Moselle valley, the most profitable tree in forestry is currently the Douglas fir! A conifer from America! Walking around, I myself rejoiced from a distance – what beautiful tall spruces, whole mountain slopes! I walk closer – oh…! We can see Douglas firs in the Skrīveri Arboretum, they were planted back in the time of Max von Sivers (full name Friedrich Maximilian Oscar Freiherr von Sivers)! Looking at the experience at the botanical garden, we know that the Douglas fir from time to time faces problems with diseases, which at times make its crown quite sparse. It is too early to judge the profitability of this tree here! The question is open!
Speaking of Germany and other countries in Europe: how correct is it to compare the areas of protected territories? It is emphasized that we have this much, but there – in different climatic conditions, in a different country, in a different society – it is different!
What each country includes in the concept of a “specially protected nature territory”. For example, in German cities, I was surprised that weedy, unkempt railway edges are presented as nature conservation areas! Of course, compared to manicured areas, they can conditionally be called that. Within a municipality or city, there may be a desire to save at least something conditionally natural or at least wild in this way. In many places in the mountains, it is not necessary to declare a territory as protected because no one can get there anyway. In that sense, Latvia’s nature is much more vulnerable. If we are talking about invasive species, we are undoubtedly in a better situation in Latvia than the Germans. For example, the Germans once came up with a “good innovation” – to promote pine growth with natural nitrogen fertilization! They planted black locusts in pine forests: nodule bacteria, nitrogen! Wonderful! But! Wonderful, until you cut the forest down… The pine can no longer seed itself because in the clearing there is gorgeous black locust undergrowth. Plant it? First, try to get through it alive… Will you plant pines as saplings? The black locust “gives” more than a meter-long shoot in a year and there is no room left for the pine! The forest grew better as a “result of innovation”, but when the pine was cut down, a thicket of black locust remained…
* the conversation with Andrejs Svilāns turned out to be substantial and long enough to divide it into two parts. A continuation is expected...