Press con­fer­ence on 02/07/2006

At the annu­al press con­fer­ence of the friends’ asso­ci­a­tion, the chair­man of the board, Thomas Berg, gave the review of 2005 and the out­look for 2006 as follows:

“2005 was a good year for the devel­op­ment asso­ci­a­tion. We have suc­ceed­ed in leas­ing the land acquired for nature con­ser­va­tion pur­pos­es with­in the frame­work of plow exchange agree­ments with the com­pa­nies in accor­dance with the main­te­nance and devel­op­ment plan. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly grat­i­fy­ing for nature con­ser­va­tion that the valu­able dry grass­land loca­tions have been secured over a large area in this way, in coöper­a­tion with the ten­ants and the experts from the nation­al park administration.

With the top-class excur­sion pro­gram in con­junc­tion with our part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, which is to be con­tin­ued in 2006, we have again suc­ceed­ed in reach­ing numer­ous peo­ple and get­ting them excit­ed about nature con­ser­va­tion, as well as with oth­er forms of pub­lic rela­tions work.

The year 2005 was also a good one for nature con­ser­va­tion, at all lev­els of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the respon­si­ble sub­or­di­nate author­i­ties there was a fun­da­men­tal change in per­son­nel after the state elec­tions, which enables an unprej­u­diced new begin­ning. We want to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to let the bat­tles of the past rest and to work with the min­istry in an objec­tive, objec­­tive-ori­en­t­ed manner.

On Jan­u­ary 24th, 2006, an exten­sive set­tle­ment was reached between the asso­ci­a­tion and the min­istry before the Pots­dam Admin­is­tra­tive Court, in which all legal dis­putes from pre­vi­ous years were set­tled. The com­pro­mise demands a lot of con­ces­sions from both sides, includ­ing the club, and it was not easy for us. How­ev­er, we see this as a sol­id basis for bet­ter coöper­a­tion in the future. Of course, that does not mean that we will agree on all tech­ni­cal issues in the future, there will con­tin­ue to be dif­fer­ences and con­tra­dic­tions, but we hope for a fac­tu­al­ly and human­ly sen­si­ble coöperation.

For 2006, the top pri­or­i­ty will con­tin­ue to be the acqui­si­tion of land and, above all, the exchange of land. Inter­est­ed landown­ers can con­clude con­tracts very quick­ly if they wish. We also help with the pro­cure­ment of all doc­u­ments nec­es­sary for the sale. The nec­es­sary exchange of space from exchange areas acquired out­side the core area should, at the request of the state, take place via the com­pa­ny land con­sol­i­da­tion pro­ce­dure. But if you don’t want to wait that long or have spe­cial requests, you can con­tact the asso­ci­a­tion today. A com­bi­na­tion of swap­ping and sell­ing space is also pos­si­ble for the owner.

Coöper­a­tion with the ten­ants is also impor­tant to us in the future. As the landown­er, the asso­ci­a­tion does not want to cul­ti­vate its land itself in the future either, but rather with the help of the estab­lished ten­ants. We are proud that in prac­ti­cal­ly all cas­es, in some­times dif­fi­cult and lengthy nego­ti­a­tions, a solu­tion has been found that local busi­ness­es and nature con­ser­va­tion can live with. For the future, how­ev­er, we would like to see such a pos­i­tive bal­ance between the asso­ci­a­tion as landown­ers and the agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness­es as lease­hold­ers sup­port from state pol­i­tics, this con­cerns agri­cul­tur­al sub­si­dies for the busi­ness­es in accor­dance with the nature con­ser­va­tion require­ments of the main­te­nance and devel­op­ment plan, but also the exemp­tion from Costs for areas that are to be com­plete­ly tak­en out of use, which were pre­vi­ous­ly called total reserves and which we pre­fer to call wilder­ness areas today. We have made very detailed pro­pos­als to the Min­istry that take into account the inter­ests of nature con­ser­va­tion and farm­ers alike. We hope that things will move for­ward here.

Ref­er­ence should also be made at this point to the web­site of the asso­ci­a­tion for the nation­al park. For the past 18 months, inter­est­ed par­ties at home and abroad have been able to find out more about the nation­al park and the devel­op­ments in nature con­ser­va­tion in our region in this way. Although we work with a very small bud­get, our web­site has mean­while reached peo­ple from 37 coun­tries on four con­ti­nents. On a month­ly aver­age, our pages are vis­it­ed over 550 times. Since August 2004 we had almost 100,000 page views. The Pol­ish-lan­guage ver­sion of our home­page is to be acti­vat­ed in the com­ing weeks. The nation­al park should serve as an image car­ri­er of our eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged region much more than before. We will do our part.

So we should let the bat­tles of the past rest. After the plan­ning approval pro­ce­dure for the expan­sion of the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthaler water­way for coast­ers was offi­cial­ly end­ed and no Pol­ish approval and sup­port is expect­ed for the new con­struc­tion of the B 166 across the pold­er, this dis­sent of the past should no longer sep­a­rate us. The some­what remote and dis­ad­van­taged nation­al park region only has a chance if every­one pulls togeth­er, if pos­si­ble at the same end ”.

The board of directors