In December 2024, Denmark embarked on an ambitious plan to cut carbon emissions and restore 250,000 hectares (617,763 acres) or almost 6% of the country into forested area. One local initiative is afforesting agricultural land in Aarhus municipality, home to the country’s second-largest city, where nature is being allowed to take its course — with some help. Biologist Peter Søgaard, Aarhus municipality’s afforestation project manager, told Mongabay that in Vilhelmsborg, an area south of Aarhus city, 300 hectares (741 acres) of municipal-owned agricultural land has been parceled out for rewilding. Existing trees on this land will be left to naturally disperse seeds and establish a new forest ecosystem, instead of traditional afforestation where seedlings are actively planted to create a new forest. Natural regeneration or afforestation by natural colonization is commonly used to restore degraded tropical forests or to forest abandoned agricultural land. But in Denmark it’s been “barely tested,” said Mikael Kirkebæk of the Danish Climate Forest Fund (Klimaskovfonden), a government initiative working with the municipality to fund and afforest the southern portion of the land. Researchers have found that natural colonization of previously cultivated fields in Denmark leads to more native, insect-pollinated and bird-dispersed tree species compared to land where trees are actively planted. In Vilhelmsborg’s afforestation, the first step was to allow water to return to the surface of the farmlands and create streams, Søgaard said. Denmark has a long history of converting wetlands into farms by draining the water out using an extensive network of underground…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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