You just have to look at how utterly the Harz pine forests have been completely destroyed by the bark beetle to see what monocultures get you. It's just huge swaths of lands filled with nothing but dead trees
There's the additional complication that when the beetle or the windstorm come there's suddenly an overabundance of wood on the market, which depresses prices. You'd need to do forest maintenance but cannot afford it, market forces are against it. It's like the Schweinezyklus but worse.
I have heard estimates of 100 million trees dead in the Harz. The common refrain is that this was caused by climate change, but also choice of monoculture was a major contributing factor as the area was historically covered by mixed deciduous. Furthermore, choice of forest type will affect soil moisture retention, so reduced rainfall would have been buffered by better choice of forest type.
Loss of those trees was an economic disaster. I’m not sure it’s an environmental disaster yet - especially as replanting seems to be with better reference to the agro-climatic zone.
I‘ve heard from a local that in the onset of the bork beetle infestation, it was decided not to intervene (leaving dead trees there). This contributed to the catastrophe. Not sure if this is true.
Is that the case? I didn’t realise. Although as a tourist draw, dead trees are not exactly that appealing. A couple of years ago, I took my three year old daughter up a mountain, and she earnestly said to me: “the once’ler”. We haven’t been back.
