Danish National Forest

Danish National Forest

Yesterday we visited the Danish National Forest, which was another fantastic experience here in Denmark. I personally would love to camp somewhere in this forest, but that trip will be getting planned in the future. Here's Toby's daily question:

Contrast today’s experiences of a Danish National Park with America’s National Parks and/or those of other countries.

Yesterday while visiting the Danish National Park, I realized many things differed between the parks back home. Some of the parks I have visited back home are Yellowstone National Park, Point Defiance Park, and some of the vast parkland in British Columbia. All of these have such a strict view of conservation, while at the Danish National Park they were foresting to pay for the land and upkeep of the park. This disturbed many people in the class, and to a slight extent it did for me as well. I believe the thought behind it was good though. The problem with our timber companies that cut down trees is that they are private firms that rarely reinvest in the park or area where they are logging. The Danish National Park uses all the money it earns inside for the park and services. I also believed the way they were harvesting was very thoughtful compared to the clear cutting that happens in the United States. The Danish national park is also much smaller than most of the national parks in the United States. Also, speaking of size, the United States is way larger than Denmark. I can understand why the Danish National Park needs to obtain in income. The thing I disagreed with was how forced some of the national reintroduction was. The idea of bringing back beetles to the area was a good one, but it seemed like they were allowing for a massive amount in only a small location. This perturbed me as I believe to replace an animal into nature it needs to have the opportunity to exist in multiple places and spread from small groupings. The landscape itself was also very different from the American national parks, as Danish landscape is very rolling and flat, with shallow bodies of water. All of the national parks I have visited back home are filled with soaring mountains, deep glacially cut rivers and lakes, and many evergreen trees. From the looks of it, there were a lot more deciduous trees. Overall I think both types of national parks have a solid ideal focus on nature conservation,  with two different approaches.

National Park, and cool abbey inside