Leipzig: incendiary attack against the forest devourer

via: sansnom

[North of the city of Dresden (capital of the region of Saxony) is the Heidebogen (“Heibo”) forest, which has been occupied since August 2021 to prevent it from being razed for the adjoining KBO gravel plant.
On Wednesday, February 15, about 50 people who had built tree houses and erected barricades at Heibo began to be evicted from the forest in a large-scale police operation that ended the next day. Since then, the public company Sachsenforst (the German equivalent of the ONF for the region of Saxony, which also manages the “natural parks” of the region) has taken possession of the site with four harvesters and 70 forestry employees, beginning to level the hectares of state-owned forest promised to the gravel pit.
On Thursday, February 16 in Leipzig, four vans parked in the Sachsenforst parking lot were set ablaze during the night in retaliation, causing nearly 100,000 euros of damage and the opening of an investigation under the aegis of the PTAZ (the Police Center against Terrorism and Extremism). Here is a translation from the German communique, claimed three days later by “anarchists”].

Sachsenforst vehicles set on fire – Heibo stays!

On February 15, the cops commissioned by Sachsenforst started to clear the occupation of the Heibo forest near Dresden. This is the third time this year that an occupation has been evicted. This is the next place where people oppose the destruction. And as in Danni, Hambi or Lützerath*, it is the interests of capital that are to be imposed. The clearing of 900 hectares of forest and the associated destruction of irreplaceable wetlands and springs is unique in Germany. For years, various environmental associations have been warning of the extent of the phenomenon, and for just as long, those responsible have ignored them. The state-owned company Sachsenforst, which is directly subordinate to the Ministry of Ecology of the state of Saxony, is in the front line. A green policy, as usual.

Specifically, the company KBO wants to appropriate the gravel under the Heidebogen forest. And above all, they want to turn this gravel into concrete, which is worth its weight in growth-oriented capitalism.

In order to meet this growth imperative, a forest would have to disappear, an ecosystem that provides a habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. Of course, the clearing of land as it is currently taking place is always embellished by the fact that it will be reforested one day or another. But it is clear that an ecosystem that has thrived for decades cannot simply be “restored” later. All of the living things killed and hunted by the ongoing work will not return because they are asked nicely.

But what will probably have an even greater impact on nature at Heidebogen and on climate change is the destruction of the surrounding marshlands. The work of the gravel plant brings nutrients into the groundwater that feeds the peat bogs, which depend on the exact opposite: the lack of nutrients. Only in this way do bogs provide a special habitat for organisms that would otherwise be colonized by others with higher nutrient requirements. In addition, peatlands are an extremely efficient CO2 reservoir, with a storage volume far exceeding that of forests. In other parts of Germany, attempts are being made to renaturalize peat bogs with huge amounts of money, while in Heibo, a unique bog area, which had remained almost untouched until now, is being endangered. Since a peat bog only grows one centimeter per year, renaturation is only a fig leaf to hide the fact that we are knowingly heading for disaster.

We have long been convinced that green growth is a lie. If we want to preserve life on earth, we must take other, fundamentally different paths. We must put an end to the growth obligation and this will not be done through parliamentary participation, peaceful protests or other democratic means. We have therefore decided to attack Sachsenforst, as the main party responsible for the eviction and clearing. In this way, we are making our contribution to the struggles against the destruction of the planet all over the world. Whether in Heibo, Fecher or in all the other occupations that have had to give way to the two-headed hydra of state and capital. Without forgetting that a utopia was lived in these places, opening perspectives, far from all the garbage that invades us daily.

We would like to thank all the people who stood firm in the forest and put climate protection into practice!

Freedom for all those still in prison!
For anarchy!

Anarchists

PS:
One more small suggestion from us to finish: all the cops who are evicting people from the forest could be used wonderfully for useful work, for example to plant new trees without destroying an ecosystem first.

For more information:
heibo.noblogs.org
grueneliga-dresden.de/images/documents/hintergrund/steinbeisser_2019-2.pdf

* Note of Sans Nom:
Danni is the forest of Dannenrod (Hesse) expelled in November 2020 (see here) // Hambi is the occupied forest of Hambach in North Rhine-Westphalia (see here) // and on the expelled village of Lützerath in January 2023, see here