Uaul Scatlè - Fichtenurwald, Brigels

If you climb from Brigels along the Flem, almost an hour up towards Val Frisal, you will pass the spruce forest. At first glance, the steep forest to the left of the path looks like a normal subalpine forest. On closer inspection, the many dead trees and the obviously omitted care are striking.

"Scatlè" means something like "nested", and the spruce forest is really nested by steep rock ledges, boulder debris fields and avalanches. Because it is also quite remote, no wood has ever been felled. Investigations have shown that there had been neither forest grazing nor charcoal burning. The herd of goats, which used to pass by twice a day in summer, had grazed at most along the lower edge of the Flem. To keep the forest in its original state, to create a "Reservat d'uaul primitiv", this was decided by the municipality of Brigels as early as 1909. This was four years before the creation of the Swiss National Park.

In the "open-air laboratory" of Scatlè, forest engineers and forest ecologists can study the natural life cycle of a subalpine forest. Rarely has a piece of forest been measured so often and its trees and rotting tree corpses so meticulously catalogued.

A spruce has a life expectancy of about 500 years. 100 years of scientific observations therefore provide insight into at most a fifth of a forest generation. On the other hand, the small piece of jungle has helped some hard-working students to earn doctorates in a short time!