The Forestry Elite Centre

It’s been a while since Wolfgang Hintsteiner passed the forestry school on the green outskirts of the town centre of Bruck an der Mur as a compulsory school pupil in the post bus, school days in, school days out, without being able to imagine much about the sign on the building. Just as little as he could have imagined ending up on the list of graduates and later going in and out of the school as a teacher.
Hintsteiner was even appointed headmaster on 1 September this year, initially on an interim basis. “And because many people still feel the same way today as I did back then, we make every effort to publicise our school by taking part in education fairs and doing a lot of public relations work,” says Hintsteiner, describing one of his many tasks.
The times are certainly playing into his and the school’s hands: more young people than ever are interested in nature and are striving for meaningful careers in sustainable disciplines such as forestry, which has a key role to play in overcoming the climate crisis.
In the forestry sector itself, the HBLA no longer needs to advertise itself extensively. On the one hand, this is due to its professional standing and, on the other, to the monopoly position that Bruck now has. Austria’s other forestry college in Bad Vöslau was closed in 2005 as part of a ministerial structural reform. “We naturally benefited from this,” confirms Hintsteiner. “On the one hand, our student numbers have increased even further, and on the other hand, we have been able to add the three-year advanced training programme to our five-year standard training course.”

Tractors in the school inventory

The Ministry cannot be entirely blamed for the decision, as the facilities at a school like the one in Bruck go far beyond what is usual at other sixth form colleges. For example, the Bruck forestry school operates two training forests, one of which is located in the immediate vicinity of the school. The calcareous Lahnhube training forest, on the other hand, is located 45 minutes by car from Bruck at an altitude of 1,000 to 1,800 metres above sea level.
Both forests are not only used for tree and forest care, but also for hunting. This is done by the students, who also take the hunting licence exam as part of their training and learn everything they need to know in theory and practice – including shooting and cutting up game.
In line with the curriculum and the reality of forestry, Hintsteiner and his colleagues manage the two training forests in accordance with the school’s mission, taking both ecological and economic aspects into account. Accordingly, the forests are managed by the district forester together with two experienced forestry workers and the pupils.
The school inventory therefore also includes tractors, cable cranes and other equipment for timber harvesting, which clearly has a considerable impact on the budget. Incidentally, this also affects the budget of the parents, who have to pay for mountain boots, outdoor clothing and more exotic items such as cut protection trousers.
In addition to the forests, the HBLA also maintains a small mountain pasture, which is mainly used for forest education lessons.
This is just one of a whole range of specific subjects on the impressively extensive curriculum: Applied biology, ecology, forest ecology and silviculture, forestry and environmental protection, wood products and bioenergy, agriculture and rural development; as well as forestry and work technology, surveying and forestry planning, construction and alpine hazards, as well as hunting and fishing.
There are also lessons in project and quality management, the general education subjects of German, English and IT, as well as business administration, accounting and mathematics, including cost and price theory and financial mathematics. A large part of the teaching is practical, and work placements in forestry companies are a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Not only the forestry service is calling

This is why the school, which is internationally networked via the Erasmus programme, also has a reputation for offering an excellent education, although this only comes at the price of intensive collaboration. Mareiner saleswoman Brigitte Treitler, who graduated from Bruck, knows a thing or two about this.
As a graduate of the school and a trained forester, Mareiner sales ace Martin Breitenberger also confirms the reputation of an education in Bruck, which for the most part produces young talent in Breitenberger’s first profession. “Many years of experience show that around half of our graduates take the state examination to become foresters after gaining the relevant professional experience,” says Headmaster Hintsteiner.
The fact that he is gender-balanced is not a formality: almost a fifth of the young people at the school are already female; in the school’s hunting courses, the gender ratio is already balanced. This is also the goal for the classes: “In addition to the environmental seal of approval, we also have the MINT seal for maths, IT, science and technology,” says Hintsteiner proudly, “and this is only possible in conjunction with efforts to get more girls and young women interested in these subjects. That’s why we also take part in Girls’ Day, among other things.”
Anyone who doesn’t want to join the forestry service after graduating from high school has all kinds of professional and academic opportunities with a certificate from Bruck: Work in technical forestry offices, in teaching and testing, in torrent and avalanche control, as Brigitte Treitler did in the wood processing industry, in nature and environmental protection or wildlife ecology as well as in landscape planning or in national parks. The career prospects are all the brighter as the forester profession is one of the shortage occupations in Austria.

Forest images from space

The word is getting around: with almost 120 students, Styria accounts for the lion’s share, but all other federal states are also represented in Bruck: Carinthia and Lower Austria with over 60 each, Upper Austria with almost 40. Bringing up the rear is Vorarlberg, where four pupils come from. At least ten come from Vienna. “You can definitely tell that the city dwellers are socialised somewhat differently, but are very seriously interested in nature. That makes our school as heterogeneous as it should be”, emphasises Wolfgang Hintsteiner.
For the many external members of the school community, the Forst-HBLA offers a boarding school in an attractive shingled timber building, which is just as much a part of the campus as the main building built in 1900, the former Brucker Bürgerspital and another new timber building, for which the school won a timber construction prize.
Hintsteiner has little to worry about in terms of capacity utilisation, but is more concerned about filling the vacancies. This is because the requirements for forestry teachers are high: a degree from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences plus further training at the University of Agricultural and Environmental Pedagogy are required. When the school advertises a position, not many people apply, but they are usually highly qualified teachers.
Hintsteiner also believes that his school needs to continuously develop its content: Climate change requires different concepts for silviculture and forest management, and improved hunting strategies will be needed in the future due to the high game pressure in some places.
Digitalisation is also a huge topic: “Soon it will be possible to carry out forest inventories using satellite data and forest development using complex growth simulators, and young trees will be transported to their destination using heavy-duty drones in the near future. Then there is the digitalisation of forest data, which extends to business with sawmills and timber traders. We have to remain agile.”