If it says national park on it, it has to be a national park
Today, on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006, the Brandenburg State Parliament will discuss the new national park law draft passed by the Brandenburg State Government on May 30th, 2006 in the first reading and presumably refer it to the specialist committees. The nature conservation associations, including the Association of Friends of the German-Polish European National Park Unteres Odertal e. V. as a local development association, criticize the draft law as a sham package and a fraudulent label. It is true that 50% of the national park area, i.e. around 5,000 hectares, will be designated as a future total reserve. However, unlike in the old law, there is no statutory deadline for specific expulsion, so there is no time pressure and no development. It is well known that paper is patient.
In the national park, everything is possible that previous users together could wish for, albeit with time and space restrictions: swimming, riding, ice skating, canoeing, hunting, fishing, fishing, etc. Even the total reserves do not keep what they promise.
A national park becomes an amusement park. Nothing against these beautiful leisure activities that are granted to everyone. In Brandenburg’s only national park, on 0.3% of the land area, nature conservation must also have priority. That is precisely the unique selling point of a national park. Everything else is a fraudulent label.
Visitors are of course welcome in the national park. There are over 200 kilometers of hiking and biking trails at your disposal. That should actually be enough.
The Friends’ Association therefore calls on the Brandenburg State Parliament to revise the law passed by the government in such a way that it can meet the national and international criteria of a national park within a clearly limited period of time. Otherwise Brandenburg will make itself ridiculous throughout Germany.
Thomas Berg
CEO
