The History of the Squirrel Forest Campaign

The story

Dietmar Gottfriedsen

It all began in 1998 in Dithmarschen, a sparsely wooded region in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. A very active Forestry Commission officer called Dietmar Gottfriedsen came up with the idea of a forest teaching project which would involve Schleswig-Holstein’s children in the natural world and at the same time be beneficial to his forest. As a model for this he chose the squirrel which has always helped to create new forests and woodlands by industriously gathering and hiding acorns and tree seeds – creating forests with the highly successful forest seeding method.

Children play the game of forest seeding, collecting acorns and beechnuts on a suitable woodland site and - just like the squirrels – hiding them in the ground on a different site which has been chosen for reforestation. D. Gottfriedsen soon got schools interested in his project, organized meetings and found sponsors for all the things which were needed for the first Squirrel Forest Campaign: buckets, small trowels, bus transport for the children, a campfire, potatoes to roast etc. This first project was such a great success that he repeated it in 2000 and 2003. To date about 10,000 children have taken part – a whole primary school generation in that region – and have turned in excess of 100 hectares of so-called ‘conifer fields’ (conifer mono-plantations) into stable mixed deciduous woodlands and forests with a great biodiversity. The children who took part became actively involved in their natural environment. For many of them it was their first real experience of a forest. They also came to realize the someone small can create something really big! At the same time they have enabled the absorption of an additional 1,500 t of CO2 per year with their new forests.

In 2003 the Schleswig-Holstein Environment Minister Klaus Müller (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) took part in the campaign and saw for himself the success and the great enthusiasm of the young participants. In January 2004 the Squirrel Forest Campaign received an award from the Ministry for the Environment as part of the Campaign for Biological Diversity.

And even today many of those young participants from the first projects come back to visit the sites of their own Squirrel Forest Campaign and are thrilled to see how their forest is growing up with them – strong and healthy…