Christian Kleiber, the forester responsible for the Hard area, remarked in front of the media in Birsfelden that the littering problem is markedly bigger near the city than in the Oberbaselbiet. The Hard is very close and easy to reach, which is why it is more affected. Unfortunately, some forest goers lack respect.
Free access to the forest is in the Swiss civil law, but not everyone are behaving themselves correctly like guests on somebody else’s grounds. Kleiber also warns that the Hard’s drinking water filter and storage function need to be ensured. The Hardwald measures roughly 200 hectares; in total, the citizens’ community takes care of almost 700 hectares of forest in the region.
From oven to garden waste
At the press meeting, Kleiber showed his most recent finds: mattress, shopping cart, chairs, Styrofoam packaging, Television set, ventilator, carpet, oven, but also dozens of car tires. Each year, there is a total of over a hundred tires and wheels – surely not all of them deposed by private persons.
The garbage sinners are hardly ever caught
Bigger pieces of garbage are deposed along the forest streets. At the side of the road, a lot of garden waste can be found as well, also deliberately brought there secretly by car. This doesn’t just disturb the ground’s flora, but also brings foreign species into the forest. Just the disposal of neophytes takes up 250 working hours a year. The boundary between littering and vandalism is fluid: a great deal of garbage can be found near campfire sites – including household waste – and there, entire benches and tables, specially installed for forest goers, are burnt down, and trees are felled by axe. Additionally, one-way grills burnt holes into the benches, because some people don’t want to bend down.
Multi-faceted forest vandalism
Kleiber also talked about a tree house that had been built into living wood using a cordless screwdriver; young trees that had been shortened by a power saw by the dozen; a survival cave that had been dug almost two meters deep; or young wood in wild life protection lattice that had been replaced by hemp. There are also broken bottles, which pose a threat to children and dogs. Further it was said that it was difficult to estimate the cost of the garbage and vandalism damage in Swiss francs. For one thing, there is a lot of work contained in the massive furniture at the nine campfire sites in the Hard; and for another, the correct disposal brings the usual fees – at the expense of the citizens’ community’s forester business, which is in deficit. Below the line, each year the foresters collect almost 40 cubic meters of small garbage items plus bulky freight. Next to the two, weekly car collecting tours along the streets and to the campfire sites, there is now also a bicycle team on the move as garbage collectors once a week. The citizens’ community seems to be at a loss for what to do against the problem, apart from appeals. During the most delicate times, warm dry summer evenings on weekends, Kleiber doesn’t dare enter the hotspots to call people to order: the wrongdoers are most often inebriated and never alone; that’s too dangerous. And the police have other priorities. According to citizens’ councilor Leonhard Burckhardt, some kind of a ranger is being contemplated, who would be able to relieve foresters from supervision tasks and have a preventatively sensitizing effect. But this is not yet definite.