No bull­doz­er method, please!

Wilder­ness friends have already been expect­ed to do a lot in Brandenburg’s only nation­al park. For years, new dykes, inlet and out­let struc­tures were built in the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10) in already des­ig­nat­ed or planned total reserves, as well as a new road next to a new pipeline for indus­try. Con­struc­tion machin­ery noise instead of the twit­ter­ing of birds filled the land­scape. The nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion has always turned a good face into a bad game.

Now, how­ev­er, the nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion is using heavy equip­ment to inter­vene in a total reserve in the Gartzer Schrey and in the Staffelder pold­er (8) that has exist­ed for a long time. Well-known con­ser­va­tion­ists, such as the local Axel Bieseke or the for­mer head of the Schorfhei­de-Chorin bios­phere reserve and for­mer Bran­den­burg Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Eber­hard Henne, protest, and the chair­man of the state-owned nation­al park sup­port asso­ci­a­tion, Andreas Hun­geling, for­mer PCK man­ag­ing direc­tor, who was found­ed by admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor Tre­ichel him­self, is protest­ing for this rea­son among oth­er things.

This cri­tique should make you think, the crit­ics aren’t some green nut­case. The nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion is request­ed to seek dis­cus­sion and to involve the crit­ics. Oth­er­wise she will lose all sup­port from the vol­un­teer con­ser­va­tion­ists. The bull­doz­er method is the wrong one here, in the truest sense of the word. Con­ver­sa­tions can help and heal here.

Even in so-called total reserves, which are now called wilder­ness devel­op­ment areas, there are good rea­sons to inter­vene cau­tious­ly in the land­scape before they are final­ly des­ig­nat­ed, for exam­ple by plant­i­ng black poplars, oaks or elms. Oth­er mea­sures, such as clos­ing drainage ditch­es, also make per­fect sense in view of the increas­ing drought. But they should be done cau­tious­ly, gen­tly and in close con­sul­ta­tion with those affect­ed. The alle­ga­tion in the room: Here civ­il ser­vants preach water to oth­er peo­ple who drink wine and take out rights that they deny oth­ers, is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous. Find­ing a con­sen­su­al solu­tion would now be the first duty of the head of the nation­al park administration.

Appar­ent­ly we have here again the sit­u­a­tion typ­i­cal of the Bran­den­burg admin­is­tra­tion that avail­able funds have to be spent short­ly before the cash desk clos­es. In this case, the means for com­pen­sato­ry and replace­ment mea­sures for the severe inter­ven­tions in the nat­ur­al bal­ance caused by the con­struc­tion of the dyke in the nation­al park. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion had rec­om­mend­ed sev­er­al times that these funds should be invest­ed in for­est ini­tial mea­sures (black poplar, oak, elm) in the almost com­plete­ly defor­est­ed pold­er that were both tech­ni­cal­ly and local­ly sen­si­ble. But the admin­is­tra­tion — as always — did not fol­low this nature con­ser­va­tion pro­pos­al of the asso­ci­a­tion on prin­ci­ple. Now she feels com­pelled to spend mean­ing­ful mon­ey on sense­less, even harm­ful build­ing mea­sures in the heart of the nation­al park so that they do not expire.

Thomas Berg (CEO)