Woidke’s national park policy failed

“Almost ten years after the order of the land reor­ga­ni­za­tion for the Unteres Oder­tal Nation­al Park by the Bran­den­burg Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, the respon­si­ble state office for land reor­ga­ni­za­tion sought a con­ver­sa­tion with the largest prop­er­ty own­er, the Fördervere­in, for the first time on Fri­day, July 17, 2009, and announced that it intends to assign the asso­ci­a­tion to Zone I (total reserves). Since the land reor­ga­ni­za­tion was ordered, the asso­ci­a­tion has insist­ed on being assigned to Zone II (50% of the nation­al park), as the deci­sion on land reor­ga­ni­za­tion from 2000 also provides.

Accord­ing to this deci­sion, the Nation­al Park com­pa­ny, i.e. the Min­istry for Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Envi­ron­ment and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion (MLUV), would have to instruct itself in Zone I. Only when all pub­­lic-sec­­tor areas have been exchanged for Zone I can one think of instruct­ing the pri­vate asso­ci­a­tion there as well.

Con­trary to its own order res­o­lu­tion, how­ev­er, it was always the aim of the MLUV not to instruct the asso­ci­a­tion in Zone II, as is legal­ly required, but instead in Zone I (total reserves).

The asso­ci­a­tion will not accept this ille­gal prac­tice, which con­tra­dicts the minister’s own order, for the fol­low­ing reasons:

1. As the own­er of the total reserves, in which use should no longer be pos­si­ble in the future, the asso­ci­a­tion no longer has any options for nature con­ser­va­tion. How­ev­er, he has the inter­est and the com­pe­tence to be able to car­ry out species and biotope pro­tec­tion mea­sures on his land in the long term.

2. Although the asso­ci­a­tion has to bear reg­u­lar costs on des­ig­nat­ed total reserve areas, eg for the water and soil asso­ci­a­tion, it can no longer gen­er­ate any income. How­ev­er, this seems to be exact­ly the inten­tion of the MLUV, name­ly to with­draw income from the asso­ci­a­tion and bur­den it with expens­es, which soon­er or lat­er leads to insolvency.

Con­trary to what has been promised, the amend­ed Bran­den­burg Water Act does not stip­u­late that an own­er of total reserves is exempt from fees for the water and soil asso­ci­a­tion. He may only ask the MLUV to reim­burse the fees paid, which may or may not be grant­ed to him in full or in part, depend­ing on the cash sit­u­a­tion and the MLUV’s discretion.

3. The asso­ci­a­tion is com­mit­ted to the polit­i­cal require­ment to take half of the nation­al park out of use and leave it to nature. How­ev­er, the legal des­ig­na­tion of total reser­va­tions is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the state and not of a pri­vate asso­ci­a­tion. For this rea­son, as can be read in the admin­is­tra­tive deci­sion, the land itself must take pos­ses­sion of the planned total reserves.

How­ev­er, it would be more impor­tant to real­ize at short notice, first of all, to stop the cost­ly and ener­­gy-con­­sum­ing annu­al pump­ing of the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10) imme­di­ate­ly and to leave the inlet and out­let struc­tures open all year round. The farm­ers work­ing in the area have already agreed to this pro­ce­dure in accor­dance with the water man­age­ment fea­si­bil­i­ty study of the MLUV, if their areas nev­er­the­less remain eligible.

On the oth­er hand, it will be very dif­fi­cult, as planned by the state, to take around 3,000 hectares of agri­cul­tur­al land from the fund­ing frame­work through the for­mal des­ig­na­tion as total reserves. For the farms this would mean a loss of sub­si­dies of € 1–1.5 mil­lion per year. If that is to be imple­ment­ed, the min­istry has to do it itself and not blame a small asso­ci­a­tion to accuse it of want­i­ng to sup­press the farms. It does­n’t go together.

The asso­ci­a­tion regrets that despite numer­ous com­pro­mise pro­pos­als on its part, it has not yet come to a nego­ti­a­tion result. With­out prej­u­dice to the clear legal sit­u­a­tion, he would be will­ing to vol­un­tar­i­ly take over a con­sid­er­able amount of total reserves as part of an over­all solu­tion to be nego­ti­at­ed. Inci­den­tal­ly, more than 60% of the total reserves already iden­ti­fied today belong to the asso­ci­a­tion. The state of Bran­den­burg has a lot of catch­ing up to do in its own nation­al park.

There are already five law­suits pend­ing at the com­pe­tent admin­is­tra­tive court in Pots­dam against five rul­ings by the MLUV against the asso­ci­a­tion. A law­suit is direct­ed against a renewed ban on trans­fer­ring the club areas to the Nation­al Park Foun­da­tion. The MLUV had already approved this trans­fer of land, which was planned from the begin­ning, in a set­tle­ment before the Pots­dam Admin­is­tra­tive Court in 2006, but then did not keep its word. The oth­er four dis­putes con­cern the MLUV’s reclaims total­ing around € 1 mil­lion, which the MLUV opened after it had already declared all finan­cial claims against the asso­ci­a­tion to have been set­tled in the above com­par­i­son from 2006.

The asso­ci­a­tion can look for­ward to the out­come of the legal dis­putes with great seren­i­ty. It is to be expect­ed that the state of Bran­den­burg, as in ear­li­er pro­ceed­ings, will again be cer­ti­fied by the courts as hav­ing “ille­gal and immoral behav­ior” in deal­ing with strangers. You don’t real­ly have to have that again.

But nowhere else do admin­is­tra­tive court pro­ceed­ings take as long as in Bran­den­burg, so it will cost a lot of time and mon­ey. This does not harm the asso­ci­a­tion, but it does harm the nature con­ser­va­tion of the coun­try. That is why the asso­ci­a­tion hopes for a sen­si­ble nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion in the inter­ests of the mat­ter at the lat­est after the upcom­ing elections.

Bad advice, Mr Woid­ke end­ed his term of office as min­is­ter, as he began 6 years ago, with a hope­less, unnec­es­sary dis­pute to the detri­ment of nature conservation.

With­out prej­u­dice to the loom­ing dis­pute, we will do every­thing we can to ensure that the good coöper­a­tion of nature con­ser­va­tion on site does not suffer. ”

Thomas Berg
CEO