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As soon as Tesla announced the place where its new plant should be built, a wave of indignation appeared, since the site was planted with trees. It should immediately be made clear that this is not a forest, in that concept of a word that we are used to understanding. On this site is a pine plantation. The only purpose of which all these trees were planted there is to cut them for further production of cardboard from them.

Despite the fact that Tesla is cleaning up the industrial forest, it undertook to plant three times more of the real forest instead. And the company follows its promises. The Brandenburg Region Agency has found areas throughout the state for Tesla to plant new trees there. The company will plant not only pine trees, but also deciduous trees, which are more valuable from an environmental point of view.

The Brandenburg Agency provides afforestation areas that are common throughout Brandenburg. The largest areas are located near Bad Sarov (Oder-Spree), Barut/Mark (Telt-Fleming) and Brandenburg-on-Havel. Half of the new trees that need to be planted must be deciduous. This is done in order to create mixed forests that are more valuable for the environment than the pine forest that Tesla cleared now for Phase 1 and will clean it in the future for the next phases of Giga Berlin.

The German Forest Protection Association also issued a statement emphasizing that deforestation for the Tesla factory is largely justified. Because with the “right compensation” they can create forests that are better prepared for future climate events than a pine forest.

Tesla announced that it will pay for planting deciduous trees in existing pine forests and in new forests.

The Brandenburg Region Agency signed a contract with Tesla and located 143 hectares of land scattered across Brandenburg for a new afforestation. The largest areas are located near Brandenburg an der Havel, Barut/Mark (Telt-Fleming) and Bad Sarov (Oder-Spree).

RBB 24 reports that Tesla has currently planted trees on approximately 40 hectares of land near Bad Sarov (Oder-Spree), in Lower Fleming (Teltov-Fleming) and south of Brandenburg-on-Havel and the first young trees are already growing there. According to the agreement, the remaining afforestation areas should be planted in the winter of 2020. This is due to the fact that young trees, in recent years, are increasingly dying during the dry spring and summer months.

Source: Rbb 24

Most of the compensation zones that have been selected by the state of Branderburg are former fields. “I see a great opportunity to turn poor-quality agricultural landscapes into habitats for birds, insects and small mammals,” says Ralf Kätzel of the Forest Competence Center. Such forests will have the prospect of "far beyond this century."