Blogpost by Gesche Schifferdecker and Andrea Barzagli
“Today, there is no longer discussion about the general value of deadwood. Now the discussion is only about how, when, and where to preserve it.”
I heard that line like a door closing on an old argument. And then, just as quickly, another door opened onto the real question: what does “keeping deadwood” actually look like in a forest that is also being managed for people?
That’s the thread running through The Life in Deadwood, the final documentary of the LIFE SPAN project – filmed across two pilot sites, the Cansiglio Forest (Italy) and the Sailershausen University Forest (Germany). Guided by Jörg Müller, professor of conservation biology and forest ecology at the University of Würzburg, the ~20‑minute film follows a quiet, ongoing “competition between humans and saproxylic organisms”.
The term itself invites a closer look: saproxylic – from Greek for “rotting wood”, describes species that live in, on, or from dead and dying trees. Not just visitors, but dependents. Beetle larvae tunneling through softening trunks, fungi dissolving lignin into soil, birds carving nesting cavities into wood already in transition. With that in mind, the film’s central tension sharpens: how do we manage forests without erasing the home of the species that rely on decay itself?
A different kind of forest “infrastructure”: Saproxylic Habitat Sites
LIFE SPAN’s proposal is practical and surprisingly hopeful: create a network of “Saproxylic Habitat Sites” (SHS) inside managed forests – small areas of senescence where the forest is allowed to look older, messier, and more complete. Think large trees kept standing, deadwood left in different forms, and patches of open space that let light spill onto the forest floor. As project coordinator Bruno De Cinti (CNR‑IRET) explains in the documentary, a network matters: when SHSs are connected across the landscape, saproxylic species can move, disperse, and persist. In other words, conservation stops being a single fenced-off point and becomes a living system woven into everyday forestry.
One of the most memorable moments is not a statistic or a map, but a shift in attention. The documentary becomes a kind of training for the senses – an invitation to notice what classical silviculture often overlooked (or actively removed): microhabitats, veteran trees, broken tops, cavities, and the fallen trunks that look like “waste” until you realise they are neighborhoods. As Daniel Kraus, manager of the German Sailershausen forest, puts it, the film helps us “develop a better eye”.
The voices inside the forest
Michael Junginger (University of Würzburg) and Umberto Di Salvatore (CREA‑PB) connect SHSs back to day‑to‑day management: what they suggest are not “more protected areas,” but an adaptive system that can change and grow with the forest. And in one scene of the documentary, Ruth Pickert (University of Würzburg) stands in a demonstration site that looks, at first glance, a little chaotic – and says the quiet part out loud: “we can drive change by inviting people in, talking, and creating spaces for discussion”.
My take-away
The Life in Deadwood doesn’t romanticise decay; it simply restores it to its rightful place in the forest story. Deadwood is shelter, food, and corridor. It is continuity. And if the debate has shifted from whether to keep it to how to keep it, LIFE SPAN offers a grounded answer: build networks of habitat, learn to see microhabitats, and let managed forests carry more of the forest’s full life cycle – standing, falling, and returning.
The video is entirely in English, but official Italian and German subtitles can be selected in the YouTube settings.
Project website: www.lifespanproject.eu/en/
