But in the name of "renewable" energy, Germany is tearing down a forest that may well have been known to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and may have even inspired some of their stories.

In the Reinhardswald near Kassel, known as the Fairytale Forest, a previously untouched natural and cultural landscape with trees over 500 years old, is today being irreversibly destroyed. Why? To protect nature and the climate, the wind industry and green proponents claim. //

The region, which plays a central role in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, is being transformed into a large-scale industrial construction site comprising of 18 large scale turbines.

To build the 244-meter-high wind turbines, large roads are cut into the forest, thousands of trees felled, slopes leveled and large quantities of gravel piled up on the forest floor. All this will cause irreversible damage and destruction to the forest biotope. Critics and conservationists emphasize that the extent of the destruction goes far beyond what one would expect from the construction of a wind turbine in an open field.