Annu­al press release of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Unteres Oder­tal eV 2016

The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty at the turn of the year to look back on 2015 and look ahead to the begin­ning of 2016.

1. con­ser­va­tion work
   The focus of the asso­ci­a­tion is and remains nature con­ser­va­tion. In the nation­al park, the asso­ci­a­tion has the great­est exper­tise in the nature con­ser­­va­­tion-com­­pli­ant man­age­ment of Zone II areas. All agri­cul­tur­al areas of the asso­ci­a­tion are leased to agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness­es with nature con­ser­va­tion require­ments. The demand for such lease­hold areas of the asso­ci­a­tion far exceeds the sup­ply. The require­ments relate to the types of use, the times of use and the inten­si­ty of use. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion wants to pro­tect species and biotopes in these areas, for exam­ple for the reed war­bler, corn­crake or cone umbels, but also gen­er­al­ly cre­ate good liv­ing, breed­ing and feed­ing con­di­tions for mead­ow breed­ers. That is why he con­tin­ues to fight for water lev­els that are as nat­ur­al as pos­si­ble. In indi­vid­ual cas­es, nest­ing aids for ospreys, storks and hoopoes are also set up.
2. hall­ways rearrangement
   The pro­vi­sion­al admis­sion of own­er­ship from 2013, with its big hits, def­i­nite­ly brings some advan­tages for man­age­ment. How­ev­er, the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to crit­i­cize the fact that the State of Bran­den­burg allo­cates far few­er pro­tect­ed areas to itself (Zones Ia and Ib) than the pri­vate asso­ci­a­tion. This con­tra­dicts the Land Reor­ga­ni­za­tion Act and the Bran­den­burg Min­istry of Agriculture’s own ordi­nance of Decem­ber 2000, as well as nation­al prac­tice. The fact that the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, like many oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries, has received fund­ing for the pur­chase of land in the past mil­len­ni­um is not a suf­fi­cient rea­son for the state gov­ern­ment to pro­ceed in this way. The state of Bran­den­burg has enough space in the nation­al park region to assign all planned total reserves (around 5,000 hectares) to itself as prop­er­ty and lat­er as prop­er­ty. In the oral hear­ing, the pre­sid­ing judge in the High­er Admin­is­tra­tive Court clear­ly showed a cer­tain under­stand­ing of this posi­tion of the asso­ci­a­tion. It will now depend on whether the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture presents the land con­sol­i­da­tion plan in accor­dance with the pro­vi­sion­al prop­er­ty brief­ing or takes into account the delib­er­a­tions of the Cham­ber Pres­i­dent in advance. The asso­ci­a­tion reserves the right to take legal action against the land con­sol­i­da­tion plan of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. The oth­er, pend­ing dis­putes between the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion and the Bran­den­burg state gov­ern­ment are sec­ondary to this impor­tant point of dispute.
   The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion has not changed its aim or pro­file since it was found­ed. This includes nature con­ser­va­tion, eco­log­i­cal agri­cul­ture, envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion and nature research. The eco­log­i­cal agri­cul­ture is tak­en over by the Öko Agrar GmbH, the envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion by the Inter­na­tion­al­park Unteres Oder­tal GmbH. That relieves the asso­ci­a­tion. How­ev­er, he will con­tin­ue to express his views on all impor­tant issues relat­ing to nature con­ser­va­tion in the Low­er Oder Val­ley, most recent­ly on the Pol­ish plans for the recul­ti­va­tion of the Zwis­chen­oder­land financed by the World Bank.
3. web­site
   The Nation­al Park Association’s web­site has been updat­ed in recent months. It was one of the most pop­u­lar appear­ances. In addi­tion to the nation­al park year­book and the nation­al park news­pa­per, the updat­ed and mod­ern­ized web­site is one of the most impor­tant means of pub­lic rela­tions. In the course of 2016, all con­tent will be brought up to date. The extreme­ly infor­ma­tive fund of most of the spe­cial­ist pub­li­ca­tions pub­lished in the Nation­al Park year­books can already be accessed.
4. land acqui­si­tion
   Togeth­er with its part­ners, the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion has enough finan­cial resources to be able to pur­chase all the areas that are impor­tant for nature con­ser­va­tion in the region, pro­vid­ed they are offered to it by peo­ple will­ing to sell them. The acqui­si­tion of land for nature con­ser­va­tion rea­sons con­tin­ues unchanged. The asso­ci­a­tion sees this as the most impor­tant and very sus­tain­able instru­ment of nature conservation.
5. start-ups
   The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion sup­ports young, organ­ic farm­ers and their fam­i­lies in set­ting up their own busi­ness­es and farms in the Nation­al Park region by pref­er­en­tial­ly allo­cat­ing agri­cul­tur­al land at sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced leas­ing con­di­tions. Organ­ic farms with high added val­ue and new, region­al­ly based jobs are impor­tant for the region and for nature con­ser­va­tion. In sev­er­al cas­es it has already been pos­si­ble to give young farm­ers and their busi­ness­es a good start in pro­duc­tion and in work­ing life. We want to keep the peo­ple in the region, give them work and inde­pen­dence and enable them to farm in har­mo­ny with nature. Actu­al­ly, that would also be a task for Bran­den­burg state pol­i­tics. How­ev­er, it tra­di­tion­al­ly sup­ports the old, large LPG suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies, who are at the mer­cy of the price fluc­tu­a­tions of the world mar­ket or the con­di­tions of a few whole­salers. It remains to be seen to what extent the replace­ment of the head of the agri­cul­ture depart­ment in the Bran­den­burg Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture by an expe­ri­enced admin­is­tra­tive offi­cer will lead to a course cor­rec­tion. As in oth­er areas, the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion has so far had to fill this painful gap and take on a steer­ing func­tion that would actu­al­ly be a mat­ter for the state, name­ly to strength­en the rur­al region sus­tain­ably through the devel­op­ment of eco­log­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed, peas­ant structures.

Thomas Berg (CEO)