Wails for the Vienna woods

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 16

Wails for the Vienna woods

By

PETER HUMPHREY,

of Reuter, in Vienna

A public outcry over pollution is gathering momentum in Austria, where environmentalists and officials say that the forests face death from acid rain. Even the fabled Vienna woods, where princes once hunted and Johann Strauss and Franz Schubert composed musical masterpieces, are falling foul of a phenomenon that brings pollution across entire continents and is the scourge of Europe’s forests. The edges of leaves are turning brown before autumn is due, pine trees are losing their needles, growth is becoming stunted and tree diseases are spreading, environmental experts say. One of the major pollutants that cause acid rain is sulphur dioxide, which, together with other poisonous substances in the air, hinders the release of oxygen, weakens and chokes trees, and renders them vulnerable to disease.

Some 30,000 trees out of 70,000 along the ring road and avenues around Vienna’s city centre are either sick or dying, according to the Deputy Mayor, Erhard Busek. In 1983 alone, 200,000 hectares of Austrian forest — some five per

cent of the country’s tree cover — were seriously damaged, said Josef Riegler, the agricultural spokesman of the opposition People’s Party. Opposition politicians have accused the Government of allowing more than $2 billion worth of damage to trees through their failure to curb pollution. Environmentalists say that until now Austria has done little in terms of research or protection measures because the problem is largely an imported one. Officials say that domestic industry chums out annually, only 232,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide, while 665,000 tonnes are carried into Austrian air from other countries.

Those blamed for imported acid rain are West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Steps are now being taken to resist the onslaught and the City Environment Councillor, Peter Schieder, has called for an emergency anti-pollution programme and a national conference on acid rain by the autumn. “Even if Vienna’s forests haven’t shown any tree deaths yet, it is

wrong to neglect the grave problem of acid rain,” he said.

Public concern over the environment has recently surged in Austria, in particular, over the building of new power stations along the Danube, famed as a blue river from the title of a Strauss waltz, but now very brown.

A demonstration against a new power plant to be built at Hamburg, near the Czechoslovak border and the site of a primaeval forest that ecologists say is the last of its kind in Europe, led to rows between protesters and the police. Mr Schieder has called for immediate steps to cut industrial emissions from power stations and long-range heating grids. He also demanded less nitrous oxide eramissions, incineration of refuse, and stricter rules on vehicle exhaust fumes.

Underscoring the concern among the public and officials is the important economic role of Austria’s 3.75 million hectares of forest, both for lumber value and indirectly in terms of tourism that the woodlands help to attract. The value of forestry production in 1982, including the trade of timber, will amount to 6 per cent

of the national income, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

Tourism earned 94.65 billion schillings (about $6.75 billion) or 10 per cent of national income, official figures show. Moreover, some 200,000 jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on the forestry sector. Prominent in calling for antipollution measures is the province of Upper Austria, where the ruling Socialists have recommended the establishment of an environmental protection agency and a regular budget allocation to finance it.

Officials are anxious that the problem should not reach the dimensions seen in neighbouring states, where whole forest regions are dying out.

Foresters in West Germany recently estimated that forest death was inflicting 1.5 billion marks ($756 million) of damage there each year and that 25 per cent of their trees were diseased.

Other reports say one in three trees in the entire Alps range are afflicted by acid rain which particularly affects the pine and fir trees that characterise alpine forests.

The Environment Minister, Kurt Steyrer, has been trying to push Austria’s neighbours into stricter anti-pollution measures through the 1979 convention on long-range trans-boundary air pollution, of which Austria is a signatory.

Although Austria’s neighbours have admitted their blame for exporting acid rain and pledged to reduce it, there is no means here yet of monitoring how much comes from where and thus to what extent each country is keeping its promise.