# Belgium climbs 40 metres to plant its next forest > Four climbers, a giant slingshot and bags of pine cones: how Belgium is seeding a forest built to survive the next 200 years. - Title: Belgium climbs 40 metres to plant its next forest · Malay Mail - Summary: Four climbers, a giant slingshot and bags of pine cones: how Belgium is seeding a forest built to survive the next 200 years. Belgium is harvesting seed now… - Keywords: forestry, climate change, belgium, wildfires, biodiversity, news, world, climbs, metres, plant, next, forest - Source: Malay Mail — https://malaymail.com/news/life/2026/09/13/pine-cone-harvest-offers-belgium-a-natural-defence-against-climate-change/234912 - Published: 2026-09-13T07:00:00+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: forestry, climate change, belgium, wildfires, biodiversity, news, world ## Forty metres up a larch Luca Bruscia, a 25-year-old pruner, spends hours in the canopy near Genappe filling canvas bags with cones. The seeds inside are the raw material for Belgium's future woodland. ## A fire that changed the plan The work got urgent after Belgium's largest wildfire in a century. In the High Fens reserve, 3,000 hectares of peatland, pine and hiking trails burned, roughly half the size of Manhattan. > We used to see this kind of thing happen in southern Europe, and now it's happening here. It's quite striking ## No choice but to adapt Fires and long dry spells are now a Belgian problem, not a Mediterranean one. Forestry contractor Adrien Baudoin expects the pattern to intensify rather than settle. > It's going to get worse and worse ## A slingshot and a rope It took the four-person team several attempts with a giant slingshot to fix throw-lines on high branches. Then they climbed about 130 feet and worked each tree for a couple of hours. ## A one-month window Harvest runs from mid-August to mid-September, before the cones crack open and scatter their seeds on the wind. Miss it and the year's crop is gone. ## Dried, spun, sorted, chilled Cones go to the forestry office at Marche-en-Famenne, where they are dried and spun in a machine like a washing machine to shake the seeds loose. Sorting and cold storage can take years. ## What a kilo of seed costs A kilogramme holds around 35,000 seeds and sells for about €3,400, roughly RM15,900, with up to half of them germinating. Public and private forests buy the stock. ## The spruce problem Belgian forests lean heavily on spruce, and that sameness has acidified soils and left stands easy prey for insects, disease and storms. ## Southern species, Belgian soil Sycamores, maples and other trees once found mainly in southern Europe are going into the ground across the country, chosen for their tolerance of higher temperatures. > The forest of the future will be highly diverse ## Trees cannot walk fast enough Species shift their range on their own, but far slower than the climate is moving. Eleonore Scholzen's team is doing by hand what the forest would take centuries to do alone. > Trees migrate naturally, but this migration is not fast enough to keep pace with climate change ## Key takeaway Belgium is harvesting seed now to swap its fragile spruce monoculture for a mixed forest that can handle a hotter, drier climate.