New fountains make dry lawns wet (04/17/2012)

The Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Unteres Oder­tal e. After a long con­struc­tion peri­od, V. had three new boil­er wells com­plet­ed on the dry grass­land near Stützkow and Stolpe as well as a drilling well in Mescherin and hand­ed them over to its agri­cul­tur­al users and ten­ants. This means that hors­es, cat­tle, sheep and goats, with whose help the farm­ers main­tain the dry grass in a nature-friend­­ly man­ner, receive a decent and inex­pen­sive water sup­ply direct­ly on site. Up until now, the water had to be brought in by tanker, which was cost­ly. The dry grass­lands, which are valu­able for fau­na and above all for flo­ra, can now be used more cost-effec­­tive­­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly for farm­ers. Agri­cul­ture and nature con­ser­va­tion ben­e­fit equal­ly from this mea­sure, in line with the phi­los­o­phy of the association.

The con­struc­tion project, which was also sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Park Admin­is­tra­tion, was fund­ed by the State Office for Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Agri­cul­ture and Land Man­age­ment (LELF) with 75% of the total costs of EUR 41,885.71. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion con­tributed EUR 10,471.43 and con­tributed a lot of their own in plan­ning and sup­port. The work was car­ried out by the com­pa­nies ZAUNQ GmbH, Harth-Pöl­l­nitz, the well and pipeline con­struc­tion Hoppe, Albertshof and the BHS Som­mer GmbH, Ahrens­felde. As it grad­u­al­ly turned out, the sandy sub­soil did not allow drilling wells at all loca­tions, so that the shaft wells had to be cre­at­ed instead. But there is water from both types of wells.

The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion will con­tin­ue to cam­paign for suc­cess­ful coöper­a­tion projects between nature con­ser­va­tion and agri­cul­ture, also togeth­er with the respon­si­ble administrations.

Thomas Berg
CEO