The 12,000-year-old Hambach Forest has lived through many eras, but perhaps none has had a greater impact than the past half-century.
Local residents and environmentalists have been fighting for 50 years to keep this forest, located between the western German cities of Aachen and Cologne, from becoming an open-pit coal mine. At times, protesters occupied the area, living in treehouses surrounded by towering canopies to protect them from the threat of chainsaws.
Now, with about 14% of the original forest still intact, the battle is finally nearing an end. In June, the local government announced it would permanently protect the remaining forest and turn it into a nature reserve.
“The climate movement has won the battle,” said Dirk Jansen of BUND, the German branch of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. He spent decades fighting for the forest.
Multi-storey treehouse built by activists occupying Hambach Forest Image: David Young/DPA/picture Alliance
The Hambach incident is just one chapter in a much larger story, as similar conflicts between governments, private developers, and citizens occur around the world, including in the United States. There, public land is being dug up at an unprecedented rate for oil and gas extraction.
“We seem to be actively moving in the opposite direction,” Lincoln Larsen, an outdoor recreation and public lands researcher at North Carolina State University, told DW.
How Hambach became a battlefield
The dispute over Hambach began in the mid-1970s, when German energy company RWE began the permitting process to mine open-pit lignite near the forest. More than 5,200 people are scheduled to be resettled from neighboring villages, where initial local resistance over land rights has begun.
Environmentalists then took up the cause. The first treehouse occupiers set up camp in 2012, beginning a standoff that resulted in intermittent evictions by authorities.
The conflict reached a turning point in October 2018, when more than 50,000 protesters poured into the forest. That same month, Friends of the Earth Germany won a court order to halt the clearing.
#DailyDrone: Hambach Mine
To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video.
The following year, the German Coal Commission, made up of energy companies, trade unions, NGOs and citizens, protected Hambach and recommended that Germany start phasing out coal by 2038. The Hambach mine is scheduled to cease mining coal by 2029.
And just recently, the government and RWE finalized an agreement to protect what remains of the forest.
Public lands are under threat in the United States
These kinds of disputes over public land are commonplace in the United States, from copper and nickel mines in Boundary Waters, Minnesota to oil and gas drilling in New Mexico near sacred Pueblo and Navajo lands.
Public lands make up about 30% of the country, totaling about 640 million acres (259 million hectares). These range from America’s most popular national parks such as Yosemite and Yellowstone to forests and wildlife sanctuaries.
Research shows Americans like to spend time outdoors Image: robertharding/pict Alliance
They were brought under federal control by the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allowed the president to designate lands for protection. But President Donald Trump is trying to reverse that legacy, moving to shrink the government’s public lands portfolio and open up protected lands to drilling, mining and private development.
“For 100 years, presidents have used it just to add land to their portfolio of protected areas. Trump is the first to actively try to do the opposite,” Larsen said. “I mean, it’s unprecedented.”
In June, President Trump opened 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of protected Pacific waters to commercial fishing.
The president’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” created a fast-track calendar for the Interior Department to sell leases on public land for oil and gas development. He also called for increased timber production, pledging that the U.S. Forest Service would increase timber sales by 25% over the next four to five years.
The loss of public lands is not just for nature.
Selling public land for development has ripples that extend far beyond a single ecosystem. The most obvious impact is on climate. RWE was pioneering Hambach to harvest the dirtiest types of lignite, or lignite.
Hambach mine pulls brown coal, or lignite, from deep underground Image: Daniela Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
Fossil fuel extraction is not only causing global temperatures to rise and causing increasingly severe storms, droughts, floods and extreme weather events around the world. Public lands are also important for watershed management.
In the United States, many public lands are located at high elevations and capture water that downstream communities rely on for drinking water supplies.
A 2022 study by the U.S. Forest Service found that national forests in the American West account for about 20% of the total land area but contribute 46% of surface water supplies.
Then there’s biodiversity. Forests, wetlands, and marine reserves are ecosystems that exist in a delicate balance. Cutting down trees and overhunting can disrupt the entire system.
Biodiversity loss can disrupt the food supply chains on which billions of people depend and create resource shortages that can cause political instability. The UK acknowledged this year that the loss of global biodiversity has serious national security implications.
Why communities fight to keep public land public land
Additionally, people often report feeling an intrinsic connection to the nature around them. This is especially true for indigenous communities, which have frequently led the fight to protect the natural world from oil and gas extraction.
One of the largest battles on public land occurred in Alaska, the state with the highest percentage of Native Americans. Many local communities still rely on traditional hunting and fishing for their livelihoods and are largely opposed to drilling.
Test drilling camp at the Willow Oil Project site on Alaska’s North Slope in 2019 Image: ConocoPhillips/AP/picture Alliance
That personal stake is bipartisan. According to the survey, about three-quarters of those questioned oppose closing public lands and selling them to the highest bidder.
The country’s national parks, also known as “America’s Greatest Idea,” welcomed a record 331.9 million visitors in 2024.
“It’s that attachment to these unique places that motivates people to fight to protect them,” Larsen said.
The financial risks are high as well. Outdoor recreation supports a $1.2 trillion industry and 5 million jobs. In many communities, public lands attract tourists, sustain small businesses, and support local economies.
In Hambach, the remaining forest will become a publicly managed natural development area from 2035. Two new passageways will be connected to the adjacent forest to restore the ecosystem and biodiversity of the landscape. Bicycle and pedestrian paths will also be built to allow residents to safely visit the forest.
“Not a single tree will be cut down, not a single road will be paved, and what remains of the forest will be designated as a nature reserve,” said Jansen of Friends of the Earth, adding that the entire region has an ecological future in its hands. “The time of peace will come, and the forest will be a forest and nothing more.”
Editor: Tamsin Walker
Coalfield in transition
To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video.
