Today is the last day on which BUND and NRWE can adopt a position on the settlement proposal (yes or no). Meanwhile they did so. According to Andreas Pinkwart (FDP), the NRW Minister of Economic Affairs, this winter there will be no more deforestation in the rest of the once large Bürgewald.
Sure, we’re happy. We rejoice for the bats and dormice, for the middle-spotted woodpeckers to whom they owe their homes, for the pedunculate oaks, the hornbeam, the lily-of-the-valley and all living beings in and around the forest. Also with the humans who – with their persistence in the forest, in the courtrooms, in citizens’ initiatives, in guided nature tours, in the procurement of building materials and food, in lectures throughout Europe, writing, filming, translating, collecting signatures and so many other things – made possible the current interim result.

Finally, Mother Nature herself is standing trial here. The face of the anti coal movement is now a small bat, or at least the survivors of the terrorist attack (this time the word is really appropriate), when their caves were tacked with plastic foils on behalf of RWE. The population will recover as long as the forest stands, because here the conditions are optimal.
That’s how small Stalingrad can be. For the less history-minded: at Stalingrad the march of the hitherto seemingly invincible Nazi troops came into serious trouble for the first time. That was to be the turning point in World War II. But RWE is not like the Nazis, are they? No, because the NSDAP was a party, RWE is a company. But both were/are destructing the world – for base motives. For self-enrichment, allegedly on behalf of the people.
Once, RWE was a thriving corporation. Meanwhile, also their “clean” daughter Enogy suffers significant price falls on the stock market. That started when BUND announced that it was going to approve the settlement proposal. But RWE has not yet fallen into the hole they dug for all the others of us (see the German proverb for “Harm set, harm get”: “Who dig a hole for other ones, will fall themselves into it”). The forest, the pond and rare frogs in it are still suffering from the water table drawdown. In Peru, a huge chunk of ice of a melting glacier continues to threaten with a tidal wave that would wash away a whole city. Maybe that will be the next setback for RWE. The Rhenish lignite extraction and combustion still produces more particulate matter than the entire German road traffic. Coal power is still blocking European electricity grids and slowing down the expansion of renewables. The owner of the meadow is still insulted as a paranoid because he is to be forced by tax claims to sell the meadow to RWE. We still have much to do. And we are effective, believe me.

Recently, a police spokes person wondered about it and talked about “planned with military precision”. That’s how officials think. They simply can not imagine that we are effective because we have NO general staff. Really, that works. Swarms of starlings make beautiful aerobatics at a breakneck pace. Thus they are very effective in pushing out birds of prey. But I never heard that they have a general staff. RWE and the police have got something like that, even if their names are different. But we should remember that capitalism as a whole has no such thing.
Just as the police tried to break up the anti-lignite movement with contact officers and oh-so-liberal police chiefs, we, the starlings were able to promote existing discord in the state-friendly camp. That was only possible because they are not one single block. There are quite a few large companies mad at RWE and show it in public.

But still this monster threatens the forest. That is why it needs still needs to be protected by us. And why we still need the support of many people.
The dormice already got used to this neighbourhood.