Satellite image analysis shows 329 hectares of forest cleared during development of factory in Germany
The development of a Tesla gigafactory near Berlin has resulted in about 500,000 trees being felled, according to satellite analysis.
The building of the German factory has been highly controversial and attracted significant protests, as well as prompting a debate about the trade-offs involved in developing a green economy.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s owner, has criticised local police for letting off “leftwing protesters”.
Satellite images show 329 hectares (813 acres) of forest were cut down at the site between March 2020 and May 2023, according to the environmental intelligence company Kayrros. That is equivalent to approximately 500,000 trees.
Just one thing: these were a monoculture plantation, which would have been felled anyway. Not a natural wood.
That’s very important information
Not even a “yes, but…”
“Tesla builds factory on farm” is the kind of hard-hitting journalism we need.
This is a total non-story…
You left off the part where they planted even more trees to compensate but also planted them to be not farmed, with biodiversity vs the monoculture farm.
But that breaks the narrative that german greens bad!
look, a lot of people are spending a lot of money to make the greens seem bad, stop trying to get in their way you green hippy bastard
Or it could have been turned into an actual diverse forest over the next decades by deliberate measures like they are taken in many forests/plantations in the area. Almost all “Forests” in Germany are “plantations” because of the wood cut after WW2 to rebuild.
In a sense it was, though:
"Tesla is legally obliged to compensate for cleared forests 1:1 with new plantings. The new plantings are mixed forests with a deciduous wood share of more than 60 percent, which is more ecologically valuable than the felled trees on the site. In addition, the new plantings lead to the conversion of species-poor landscapes into habitats for birds, insects and small mammals.
By December 2021, around 90 percent of the required initial afforestation had already been implemented, and the remaining areas will be completed in 2022. The growth is monitored and controlled by the forestry authority and only released after several years of growth and when specified criteria are met. These new plantings will take place at various selected locations in the state of Brandenburg.
In addition, Tesla has announced that it will voluntarily replant areas that will be significantly larger in total than the planned factory site. In order to achieve the best possible result, Tesla says it is working closely with environmental and other expert groups.
Extensive avoidance and replacement measures were carried out to protect possible habitats for reptiles. Among other things, potential habitats were protected by fences. In addition, additional fences were erected to prevent further immigration of reptiles into the project area. Over the summer of 2020, sand lizards, grass snakes and forest ants were professionally relocated to the remaining area that had been applied for clearing.
The following replacement measures were carried out, among others:
- Two areas (a total of around 10 hectares) were created for sand lizards and grass snakes by clearing and building habitat structures in the immediate vicinity.
- 21 forest ant nests were protected and successfully relocated to suitable locations in the immediate vicinity.
- Replacement habitats for protected bird and bat species have been created in the immediate vicinity to ensure that the ecological function of resting and breeding sites is maintained in the spatial context.
- In the immediate vicinity of the site, Tesla has installed a total of 702 boxes as compensation (including 368 bat boxes, 329 nesting boxes and 5 nesting baskets)."
Google translated from Land Brandenburg.
… and that’s not all, apparently.
Still don’t like neither Tesla nor Elon, but in this particular instance it seems the Guardian lied by omission.
Thank you. I didn’t know about the ecological compensation measures to be this proper.
Yeah, we sure did fuck their shit up!
What, the clickbait lied?
This kind of thing is beneath the Guardian.
For a second i thought they were real trees. Thank god they are gone and the god emperor gor his giga factory.
The moment I saw the topic title, I immediately thought it was old growth forest that had been felled and was preparing for the possibility that I may have to start adding links to petitions and joining the protests here, since this is something that will be very upsetting to me even though this is in Germany, not koala habitat in Australia.
Like some dude said some time ago: elon is what happens when the spirit of a 6 year old and that of a 19th century robber baron possess the same body at once.
The fault is on Germany, not Tesla. We all know what Tesla wants to do: make money. The government has a responsibility to say “no, you cannot destroy 500,000 trees”
It was a tree farm, not a forest. Do with that information what you will.
If it was a tree farm, were the trees for wood, and harvested as usual, or did they go to waste? Couldn’t they have been relocated, since their root balls were probably all separate? It’s not the catastrophe of an ancient forest, but it’s still a negative.
Those trees were grown for the specific purpose of being cut down. I highly doubt they were just thrown away.
My assumption is that they identified an area ready for harvest, harvested them then started construction. It would be throwing away serval million euros to do otherwise.
That would be the sensible thing to do, but we are talking about Moist&Musky here, so we can’t assume.
My guess is that Mr. Elongated Muskrat didn’t own the land before so I would imagine the previous landowner harvested the trees before the construction/land purchase
My assumption is that they identified an area ready for harvest
I admire your ability to just believe. I really do.
It’s believable, because of greed, no rich guy is throwing free money away…
Tell me how much did he spend on Xitter again? Are you sure you know who we‘re dealing with?
He didn’t mean to actually buy Twitter, he fucked up because of his ego and couldn’t get out of it without getting sued to oblivion.
It is Germany, yes, but it’s not “not Tesla.”
Many companies manage to make money without destroying significant numbers of trees.
Just because something unethical is legal doesn’t mean that the person doing that thing escapes all criticism.
Criticize all of them.
Which is why tesla was legally obligated to plant as many trees somewhere else. And instead of a monoculture commercial forrest they planted a proper one that also will stay.
But only “musk bad” content sells on lemmy, so you’ll never learn that actually this gigafactory is totally fine. And yeah, it’s Europe, so shit is regulated and your regular USA corporate fascism simply doesn’t happen.
Show me Something that proves your claim that Tesla had to plant trees.
It never somehow made it to your shitty American media. So use some google translate or something: https://taz.de/Neuer-Tesla-Wald-in-Brandenburg/!5876234/
You can see they planted trees, they planted as a proper reforestation project, not as a monoculture that will be cut for paper forest that they destroyed, you can see that the quality of their new forest is being monitored.
This factory from a deforestation standpoint alone is a massive win. They get a shitty monoculture forest and they have to use their money to plant a proper one.
Because there are regulations in Europe.
But you’ll never hear anything about it cuz you live in your stupid American lemmy bubble with daily circle jerk wining about trump and musk.
Remind me to check it out in 15 years lol
Rage bait bullshit.
I hope he spends a lot of money on a gigafactory and then nobody applies for the jobs.
He has still some outstanding issues with strikes in both Germany and Sweden. I’m sure Volvo appreciates their home market.
This would be a good time for German unions to present an initiative.
This would be a good time for German unions to present an initiative.
German workers protection and union laws are pretty solid, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.
Several American ventures had a pretty rude awakening after challenging them. Ever wondered why we don’t have Walmart or Uber over here? Ubers activities are very limited in Germany because of worker protection laws and Walmart retreated from the German market over it, among other issues with German culture and law.
You don’t have uber because of taxi lobbying against it I’d say. Or do you think lieferando drivers are well covered by those laws?
It used to be. German unions are currently challenged by gig jobbing and temporary contracts like no other place in EU. That’s why I think they need to show some teeth.
I can’t believe this. Why didn’t Tesla just grow it like every other car factory?
EDIT: doing some napkin math for fun, in order to break even on CO2 impact they would need to cut down about 200 million trees to offset the CO2 savings from replacing 1 million petrol cars per year (the planned capacity of the factory).
Obviously not the only environmental consideration but it puts things in perspective a bit hopefully. It’s ok though you can keep hating Elon (I know I will), but this whole angle of talking about cutting down trees doesn’t make much sense to me.
yeah yeah, electric cars will save the enviroment i promise bro
Isnt that what we are doing everywhere, sacrificing Green for “green”?… sad. And unnecessary.
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