At the request of Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Low­er Oder Val­ley the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMU) approved the Low­er Oder Val­ley large-scale nature con­ser­va­tion project in 1992 by Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Klaus Töpfer (CDU). At that time it had a finan­cial vol­ume of DM 60 mil­lion, of which the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment want­ed to take over 75%, the state 16.8% and the asso­ci­a­tion as spon­sor 8.2%. Most of the project funds were spent on the acqui­si­tion of land for nature con­ser­va­tion pur­pos­es, so that the devel­op­ment asso­ci­a­tion was able to acquire 5,289 hectares of land by the year 2000, of which 3,319 hectares in the core area and 1,970 hectares out­side. These out­side areas are to be merged in the core area as part of a cor­po­rate land con­sol­i­da­tion pro­ce­dure ordered by the State of Brandenburg.

The major nature con­ser­va­tion project was ter­mi­nat­ed pre­ma­ture­ly in 2000 by the then respon­si­ble Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in Pots­dam. As a result, almost half of the funds promised to the state of Bran­den­burg by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in 1992 could no longer be called up. The respon­si­ble Bran­den­burg min­istry now want­ed to take the nation­al park, which was found­ed in 1995, into its own hands and has not want­ed any civic, non-prof­it or vol­un­tary com­mit­ment in this area since then. The state, now ruled by the SPD and the left, should do every­thing on its own again. The new “Willy Brandt” air­port on Bran­den­burg ter­ri­to­ry and oth­er major projects in the state showed how it works.

Since then, there has been a dis­pute about the future devel­op­ment between the Bran­den­burg Min­istry and the spon­sor of the project, the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, even in court. At first the min­istry tried to find anoth­er, com­pli­ant and sub­or­di­nate car­ri­er and to use it as a project car­ri­er, which failed. Then the com­pa­ny land con­sol­i­da­tion pro­ce­dure ordered in 2000 should be used to con­cen­trate the club areas acquired with sub­si­dies, which the min­istry had tried in vain to get its hands on, at least large­ly in the planned or already des­ig­nat­ed Zone I, i.e. in the total reserves. In the long term, the asso­ci­a­tion would only have to bear costs, for exam­ple for traf­fic safe­ty, water and land asso­ci­a­tions, prop­er­ty tax, etc., but no longer gen­er­ate any income, which would be finan­cial­ly unac­cept­able for an asso­ci­a­tion under pri­vate law in the long term. The head of the state admin­is­tra­tion, Dirk Tre­ichel, even open­ly admit­ted in the press that this elim­i­na­tion of the nation­al park asso­ci­a­tion was the main goal of the cor­po­rate land consolidation.

Despite these unnec­es­sary quar­rels, the major nature con­ser­va­tion project remains a great suc­cess. Almost 6,000 hectares of pre­dom­i­nant­ly well-usable agri­cul­tur­al land remain in the hands of an inde­pen­dent and effi­cient agency com­mit­ted to nature con­ser­va­tion, eco­log­i­cal agri­cul­ture, envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion and nature research, who can also evade strong attempts at repres­sion by the state in the long term. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly sound and sup­port­ed by sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and eth­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed com­mit­ment, after the process­es with which the Min­istry wants to bring the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion to its knees, a respon­si­ble and sen­si­ble state gov­ern­ment will come to an appro­pri­ate bal­ance of inter­ests with the Nation­al Park Association.