The prospect of approaching winter tempts many a stove owner to get fuel in the forest - without paying for it. Almost nothing is safe from thieves. Can forest owners use technology to prevent theft?
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - From individual discs to large old trunks - wood from Baden-Württemberg's forests is becoming more and more a coveted stolen good in the energy crisis. "From January to September of this year, the number of cases is at a five-year high, and there is also an increase in damage compared to previous years," said David Fritsch, spokesman for the State Criminal Police Office, on the number of wood thefts.
In the previous year, the authority counted 479 cases with damage of almost 294,500 euros. In 2018 there were 547 cases with damage of around 331,300 euros. "Wood is the new toilet paper," Tobias Knupfer, Vice President of the Association of German Foresters, is convinced.
The customers bunkered the wood for their stoves because they foresaw bottlenecks. "If people used to stock up on 20 to 25 cubic meters for the winter, they now order twice that for fear of going empty-handed." Others help themselves in the forest for their own needs or for lucrative resale. The result in both cases: the prices rise and less firewood is available.
Entire truckloads were stolen using chainsaws and cranes, with a sales value of 1,500 to 2,000 euros. Knupfer: "Meanwhile, timber dealers are springing up like mushrooms and are trying to make money online, sometimes with stolen goods." A cubic meter of wood cost between 100 and 120 euros depending on the region last year, now it is already 200 to 240 euros.
Regional focal points in 2021 were the police headquarters in Aalen (50 cases), Reutlingen (47) and Freiburg (42). "These are rural areas with a lot of forest," explains LKA man Fritsch. In urban regions such as Mannheim (15) and Stuttgart (5), the offense is much less common.
The clearance rate has been around 30 percent for years. "The forest owners cannot be satisfied with that," says Ulrich Potell, spokesman for the state forest association. However, the forest is huge, covering around 40 percent of the country's area, and therefore cannot be guarded. Many injured parties refrain from reporting because of the low chances of clarification. However, Potell believes that forest owners should always report theft. "This makes the numbers visible and political action much more likely."
The higher the degree of processing, the more vulnerable the wood is to theft. According to the state forest association, split and stacked wood from deciduous trees with a high calorific value is already popular. Forest owners should store wood in remote places. Potell: "With a lot of walkers, one of them comes up with stupid ideas." It should be clear to every thief that the stolen wood has to dry for a year or two before it can be used for heating.
Potell emphasizes that if people still steal branches from the ground, it's not a trivial offense. "Nobody should say: The branches are just there anyway, and nobody wants it." It has an important ecological function. Branches with a diameter of less than seven centimeters are deliberately not "tidied up". The forest needs them for its nutrient supply.
Contrary to popular belief, the forest does not belong to everyone, emphasizes Potell from the forest association. According to the State Forest Association, a good third of the forest area in Baden-Württemberg is shared by more than 260,000 private owners. But the municipalities and the state also manage the forest and sell the products regularly. The wood from deciduous trees, which is popular with thieves, is mainly found in municipal and state forests.
In the fight against the theft of wood, forest owners now rely on modern technology: the so-called trackers. These are tracking devices drilled into wood or hidden in piles that sound an alarm if there is movement and enable the wood owner to use the GPS data to immediately send the police to the scene of the crime. "It is crucial to catch the thieves in the act, because as soon as the owner's markings are removed and the thieves have left the forest, the wood can no longer be assigned and theft can no longer be proven," explains Potell. The association representative calls for tougher sanctions for wood thieves. "This is no longer a fringe phenomenon."
