togeth­er with NABU Brandenburg

Amuse­ment park or nation­al park — that is the ques­tion now
On the draft of the amend­ment to the Low­er Oder Val­ley Nation­al Park Act

With the draft amend­ment, Bran­den­burg is say­ing good­bye to hon­est and seri­ous nature con­ser­va­tion. The Nation­al Park Act of 1995, enforced by the then Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter and today’s Prime Min­is­ter Matthias Platzeck, was already a ver­bose, but poor law. In addi­tion to plen­ty of envi­ron­men­tal poet­ry, there was actu­al­ly only one spe­cif­ic point in the law with the date 2010, every­thing else should be reg­u­lat­ed on the basis of the law by ordi­nance, which has not yet hap­pened to this day. This year 2010, i.e. the date by which half of the nation­al park, around 5,000 of 10,000 hectares, should be legal­ly bind­ing as a total reserve, is now to be delet­ed with­out replace­ment. Instead, it is not even replaced by a new date.

The leg­is­la­ture gave the author­i­ties 15 years time to des­ig­nate half of the area as a total reserve, only then can the Low­er Oder Val­ley be des­ig­nat­ed as an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized nation­al park. 10 of the spec­i­fied 15 years have large­ly passed unused, and Bran­den­burg obvi­ous­ly no longer dares to achieve the goal it has set itself in the remain­ing 5 years. There are def­i­nite­ly social­ly accept­able and also for the pre­vi­ous user groups accept­able ways to do jus­tice to this goal. Actu­al­ly, the cri­te­ria of inter­na­tion­al nature con­ser­va­tion pre­scribe a total reserve por­tion of at least 75% of the area for inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized nation­al parks, 50% is the min­i­mum that is still accepted.

The waiv­er of a spe­cif­ic date with­out replace­ment makes the entire Nation­al Park Act non-bind­ing. Con­flicts are not resolved;

A waiv­er of a spe­cif­ic date will not remain with­out con­se­quences, because the state of Bran­den­burg has vol­un­tar­i­ly com­mit­ted itself to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in the major nature con­ser­va­tion project “Unteres Oder­tal” to des­ig­nate half of the area as a total reserve by 2010. This is what it says in the grant notice from 1992. If the state does not com­ply with this oblig­a­tion, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can claim back the funds.

It is also not accept­able to call an area a nation­al park with­out at least grad­u­al­ly devel­op­ing it accord­ing to a fixed, man­age­able and bind­ing sched­ule. The qual­i­ty con­cept nation­al park is deval­ued by such pre­tense of false facts and becomes a fraud­u­lent label, which is also to be reject­ed for the ben­e­fit and pro­tec­tion of oth­er nation­al parks. Nev­er­the­less, the coun­try does not want to forego the pro­mo­tion­al “nation­al park” label. It is also Brandenburg’s only one, while Meck­­len­burg-West­­ern Pomera­nia has three nation­al parks that are very pop­u­lar with tourists. Dis­pens­ing with the “Nation­al Park” label would mean that land restruc­tur­ing funds, in par­tic­u­lar for the expan­sion and con­struc­tion of roads, would no longer flow into the area in the mil­lions, as was pre­vi­ous­ly the case. The Low­er Oder Val­ley is still by far the best-fund­ed rur­al area in Bran­den­burg, sur­pris­ing that the oth­er regions sim­ply accept it so with­out complaint.

There would be no objec­tion to this pref­er­en­tial sub­si­diza­tion of a region if the region pro­vid­ed some­thing in return in the form of demand­ing nature con­ser­va­tion. But that is not the case here, the reward is nib­bled and the con­sid­er­a­tion for it is not pro­vid­ed. That is not acceptable.

Accord­ing to Sec­tion 22 of the Fed­er­al Nature Con­ser­va­tion Act, the fed­er­al states estab­lish nation­al parks in con­sul­ta­tion with the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­istry. This also applies to the Nation­al Park Amend­ment Act. In its state­ment of April 27, 2006, the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty took a crit­i­cal posi­tion on the Bran­den­burg amend­ment plans;

“It is at least ques­tion­able whether the planned pro­ce­dure with the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of a so-called pro­tec­tion zone Ib with­out time stip­u­la­tions to cre­ate the desired free­dom of use meets the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al require­ments for opti­mal pro­tec­tion of the core areas of the nation­al park.”

The BMU sees this as a “low­er­ing of the stan­dards com­pared to the applic­a­ble law” and states that “the expand­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties of use in the core area of the state-owned, nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive Low­er Oder­tal ripar­i­an strip project, which is fund­ed with BMU funds, do not com­ply with the nature of the pro­tect­ed area accord­ing to § 3 Nat­PUOG and also not the cur­rent ones Require­ments of the let­ter of dis­tri­b­u­tion of funds for the ripar­i­an strip project ”. “This also applies to the use of the pold­ers by canoes and Cana­di­ans in the core area.”

As for the oth­er soft­en­ing of the law, one can cer­tain­ly be divid­ed on one or the oth­er ques­tion. Nature should be able to with­stand the fact that swim­ming and rid­ing are allowed in a few select­ed places. As part of reach­ing a con­sen­sus, the friends’ asso­ci­a­tion can imag­ine move­ment here. How­ev­er, entry into water sports in the nation­al park is to be reject­ed. The water-rich state of Bran­den­burg still has many lakes, rivers and canals that are not devel­oped or used for tourism for water sports. On 0.3 per­cent of the country’s area — the only nation­al park in the coun­try is so small — there is no need to do water sports. It is an unnec­es­sar­i­ly dif­fi­cult encroach­ment on an ecosys­tem that is already strained by an extreme­ly dense net­work of trails (a total of 200 km long).

Anoth­er neg­a­tive fac­tor is the fact that the nation­al park area is to be reduced in size in some cru­cial places, as a result of which the pro­tec­tive strips between the poor dry grass­land and the adja­cent inten­sive­ly fer­til­ized arable land are lost. A so-called total reserve, in which the gath­er­ing of berries and mush­rooms and thus unhin­dered wan­der­ing is per­mit­ted, does not deserve its name. With every under­stand­ing that exist­ing tech­ni­­cal-indus­tri­al lines can be main­tained and renewed, the new law, unlike the old one, should also allow the con­struc­tion of new lines.

Togeth­er with the amend­ment to the Nation­al Park Act, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture also wants to issue a fish­ing ordi­nance and a hunt­ing ordi­nance. The hunt is to be con­tin­ued under the name of game dam­age reg­u­la­tion. In addi­tion, game feed­ing is pos­si­ble in the total reserve, and hunt­ing is per­mit­ted in an 80 m wide for­est edge strip with­in the nation­al park. Any­one who knows the elon­gat­ed, very nar­row nation­al park knows that a great many for­est areas are affect­ed by it. All of this is unnec­es­sary and harm­ful, in any case detri­men­tal to the nation­al park con­cept. Fish­ing should con­tin­ue to be pos­si­ble even in pro­tec­tion zone Ib, i.e. in the planned total reserves, but fish­ing should only be pos­si­ble in cer­tain areas, but gen­er­al­ly with cer­tain time restric­tions in pro­tec­tion zone II. From a nature con­ser­va­tion point of view, the exten­sive fish­ing per­mit in Zone II, but espe­cial­ly in the planned total reserves (Zone Ib), is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able. Because this is asso­ci­at­ed with con­sid­er­able dis­tur­bances and pol­lu­tion that can­not be tol­er­at­ed in a nation­al park. The fish­ing and hunt­ing ordi­nances also con­tra­dict the fed­er­al funds dis­tri­b­u­tion let­ter for the major nature con­ser­va­tion project Low­er Oder Valley.

The asso­ci­a­tion there­fore rejects the pro­posed amend­ment to the law, but also the asso­ci­at­ed ordi­nances on fish­ing, angling and hunt­ing, in par­tic­u­lar the asso­ci­at­ed fraud­u­lent label­ing. Bran­den­burg has to decide! Either it has to set a bind­ing sched­ule in man­age­able peri­ods of time in which half of the nation­al park is des­ig­nat­ed as a wilder­ness area or it has to admit its inabil­i­ty to cre­ate even a sin­gle nation­al park, renounce the pres­ti­gious label “nation­al park” and instead cre­ate anoth­er nature park iden­ti­fy. At some point the moment of truth strikes for everyone.

Tom Kirschey, State Chair­man of NABU Brandenburg
Thomas Berg, Chair­man of the Board of Sponsors