Arrival of the water buffalo in the Lower Oder Valley

Invi­ta­tion to a press conference 

Time: Thurs­day June 25th, 11 a.m.

Loca­tion: On the pas­ture of the water buf­fa­lo between Friedrich­sthal and Gartz / Oder

Arrival infor­ma­tion: Com­ing from Schwedt, fol­low the B2 north. 2600 m after the junc­tion to Friedrich­sthal, a paved path leads to the right. The pas­ture area is reached about 100 m behind the nation­al park sign. The junc­tion is signposted.

PHOTOCALL!

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to cor­dial­ly invite you to our press con­fer­ence for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the water buf­fa­lo. The own­er of the ani­mals and man­ag­er of the land, the Gartzer farmer Wolf­gang Dehn­ert and the chair­man of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Unteres Oder­tal e. V., Thomas Berg, will present the new­com­ers and answer ques­tions about fur­ther agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment in the pro­tect­ed area.

As you can remem­ber, in exten­sive nego­ti­a­tions with prac­ti­cal­ly all farm­ers work­ing in the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10), the asso­ci­a­tion man­aged to stop the cost­ly and ener­­gy-con­­sum­ing pump­ing and to keep the inlet and out­let struc­tures open all year round. The Min­istry for Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Envi­ron­ment and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and the State Envi­ron­ment Agency of the State of Bran­den­burg are still hav­ing a hard time see­ing and using this oppor­tu­ni­ty for the nation­al park that the asso­ci­a­tion has prepared.

When the pump­ing oper­a­tion is stopped and the inlet and out­let struc­tures are kept open, the mead­ows and pas­tures in the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10) become a lit­tle more humid depend­ing on the water lev­el of the Oder. There is there­fore a cer­tain need for adap­ta­tion in agri­cul­ture. The asso­ci­a­tion has always advo­cat­ed and advo­cat­ed a sen­si­ble bal­ance between nature con­ser­va­tion and agri­cul­tur­al inter­ests in the nation­al park. With the water buf­fa­lo, a domes­tic cat­tle that is still at home in south­ern and east­ern Europe today, there is a live­stock avail­able that is excel­lent­ly adapt­ed to the slight­ly more humid con­di­tions in Fid­di­chow Pold­er (10). With an exten­sive stock­ing den­si­ty, it sat­is­fies the inter­ests of agri­cul­ture and nature con­ser­va­tion alike. Rur­al employ­ment and income are secured and the land­scape is kept open.

The water buf­fa­lo project is an impor­tant, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed pilot project for the Low­er Oder Val­ley. It cor­re­sponds to the pro­fes­sion­al and eco­nom­ic approach of the asso­ci­a­tion that local farm­ers take over the oper­a­tion and do the busi­ness, the asso­ci­a­tion pro­vides the nec­es­sary frame­work con­di­tions. The Gartzer agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny is the lease­hold­er of the land and the own­er of the ani­mals and is respon­si­ble for the project.

Fur­ther projects with cat­tle are planned by the asso­ci­a­tion. How can we remem­ber that we live in the Chi­nese year of the buffalo?

Kind regards

Thomes Mountain
Chair­man of the Board