Here even coffee farmers from Colombia learn how to harvest timber

In the Chiemgau Alps, the Bavarian State Forest teaches how to fell timber in a sustainable way. Despite modern tools, forestry occupations are still risky.

One hundred decibels, ear protection is a must here. When Eric Bleichrodt, 26, starts up his chainsaw, the noise is deafening. Every cut must be in the right place so that the tree also falls in the right direction. Eric inspected the position beforehand, identified the escape route, warned colleagues and cut a notch into the trunk. The spruce is felled with a swoosh.

Sophie Walter is standing a safe distance further back and watching her colleagues at work. "You don't have a lot of time," she says. "Within seconds you have to make the cut just so otherwise the tree won't fall as planned." Walter is one of 15 aspiring forest managers from Southern Bavaria who are just about to take their final examination. At the end of their three-year training they return again to the course at the Forest Training Centre in Laubau, Ruhpolding. This year, two women are also involved. Women remain a minority in forestry occupations.

Sophie Walter has a simple answer to the question of why she opted for the job: "To be outside all year round. And to work with wood." Her father is a carpenter and this is therefore also where she gets her passion for the natural raw material. In Chiemgau, in particular, a lot of people want to learn the traditional trade of the Holzknecht (or lumberjack) as it is still referred to locally and which has characterised the region for centuries. Forestry workers certainly no longer live as dangerously as they did back then, but even today the occupation is still very risky.

But this tall woman is not put off by this. She says: "Sure, you get a bit nervous, but if you think about it the whole time you may as well give up." She explains that if she follows the safety standards and the rules, nothing will happen to her.

The harvesting of timber remains the core business of the Bavarian State Forest. Almost 2,700 employees managed the total of 808,000 hectares of state forest and in the 2016 financial year generated an impressive profit of €71 million. Advances in technology have meant that machinery has increasingly replaced the need for backbreaking work by forest managers, although muscle power still has a part to play. This applies most of all to the mountain slopes in the Alpine foothills. The state forestry companies in the south are therefore in desperate need of new skilled workers.

"By the end of September 2019 we will have trained 60 forest managers, approximately twice as many as there are at the moment," says Sebastian Paar, head of the Laubau centre. The centre in Ruhpolding and another in Nuremberg are responsible for the initial and continuing vocational education and training of their own forestry employees.

The Laubau centre - hidden as it may be in the Chiemgau mountains - has now also become known internationally. Approximately one quarter of all course participants come from abroad. These are coffee growers from Colombia who manage forests on steep hills at home, and Chinese forestry delegations interested in dual vocational education and training in forestry. Here they learn how to harvest wood on steep slopes or using the cable crane. Students from the Technical University of Munich's Weihenstephan campus, from Switzerland and from other countries also regularly come to the Landbau centre. "We are pretty much fully booked," says Paar.

As head of the centre, he is expected to be able to manage all of them. "That is our bible, nothing functions here without this," he says with visible pride. He is referring to the "resource plan" - an Excel spreadsheet full of colourful cells and reminiscent of the computer game Tetris. Sebastian Paar is a forestry scientist and IT expert. This is why all seminar rooms have WLAN, interactive whiteboards and regular Skype sessions. Chainsaw enthusiasts and anyone interested can even get tips from the five instructors at Laubau via Youtube tutorials.

Back in the actual classroom, instructor Wolfgang Thum zooms into the chain on a chainsaw and circles the jagged edges with his touch pen. Chainsaw maintenance is on the timetable. Five trainees examine the teeth on the chain, put the ruler in place, measure the angle and start filing away. If the angle is too acute, the chainsaw cuts too aggressively.

The chainsaw is to the forest manager what the rifle is to the soldier or the plumb line to the bricklayer - essential basic equipment. Unfortunately the chainsaw is loud, heavy and smells of petrol. Quieter, battery-powered chainsaws are indeed on the way, but for thick trunks they are still not powerful enough. However the "spacer" is perfectly adequate for maintaining young trees. This is what Wolfgang Thum calls it and demonstrates the small, battery-powered chainsaw on a long stalk in a forest area near Laubau.

The teaching unit "maintaining young trees" is all about shaping the forests of the future. Upon instruction of the forest ranger, the trainees are expected to cut young beeches across an area of approximately 50 square metres. This will help the light get to the young firs and enable them to grow better. It will take a decade for this to become a forest of fully grown trees.

Even though the forest may look natural to the layman, what they see is a result of the work of generations. The mixed forest around Ruhpolding had to grow back from nothing after lumberjacks had cleared it away by the hectare over the centuries for the mining of salt in salt works. Today, the main focus not just for the state forests but also for private forestry owners is on creating forests which are as natural as possible. The goal is a stable mixture of spruce, beech and firs.

Nature conservation is now just as much part of the training as "cultivation", explains Sophie Walter; this means interplanting of young trees - work formerly performed by women. Walter explains that, while this is certainly pleasant work, after eight weeks of interplanting you are keen for something different. "I shouldn't really actually be saying that, but timber harvesting is what I enjoy the most." Seeing the spruce fall in the right direction makes her happy.