The map shows the entire Oder estu­ary, i.e. the estu­ary area of the Oder, which begins at Hohen­saat­en when the unob­struct­ed Oder, past the Oder­bruch, squeezes through the nar­row­ness of the Neun­hagen­er Insel. The Oder estu­ary to the north is prac­ti­cal­ly at sea lev­el, so there is hard­ly any gra­di­ent. The Oder, which orig­i­nal­ly mean­dered in this estu­ary, with its numer­ous old and sec­ondary arms, was brought into its cur­rent, pold­ed form by Dutch experts at the begin­ning of the 20th century.

The map shows the Ger­man-Pol­ish Inter­na­tion­al Park, which was found­ed by a joint dec­la­ra­tion by Poland and Ger­many in 1993. On the Ger­man side, it includes the Low­er Oder Val­ley Nation­al Park and the Low­er Oder Val­ley Land­scape Pro­tec­tion Area and on the Pol­ish side the Zehden Land­scape Pro­tec­tion Park (Cedyn­s­ki Park Kra­jo­bra­zowy) and the Low­er Oder Val­ley Land­scape Pro­tec­tion Park (Park Kra­jo­bra­zowy Dolina Dol­nej Odry). This cross-bor­der, Euro­pean, espe­cial­ly Ger­man-Pol­ish area cov­ers a total of 117,274 hectares.

At the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the low­er Oder val­ley was restruc­tured by Dutch experts, the Stro­mod­er was placed on the east­ern edge of the val­ley, and the old Oder and the Wels estu­ary were redesigned with a few canal cuts to form the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthal water­way. In between came sev­er­al hun­dred kilo­me­ters Old arms to lie. There were both Dry pold­er cre­at­ed that are not flood­ed all year round, such as the Lunow-Stolper Trock­en­pold­er or the Friedrich­sthaler Trock­en­pold­er (5/6), but also so-called at the request of local agri­cul­ture Wet pold­er , which are flood­ed in the win­ter half of the year by open inlet and out­let struc­tures by the then usu­al­ly high­er stand­ing Oder water and bring organ­ic fer­til­iz­er to the mead­ows. On the Ger­man side, the tech­ni­cal struc­tures were brought up to date after reuni­fi­ca­tion at an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high cost. On the Pol­ish side, hydraulic engi­neers are plan­ning some­thing sim­i­lar, although the pold­ers have not been main­tained since 1945 and have in fact been returned to nature as sec­ondary wilderness.

In 1992 the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­istry start­ed under the direc­tion of Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Prof. Dr. Klaus Töpfer, and the Fed­er­al Agency for Nature Con­ser­va­tion (BfN), under the direc­tion of Prof. Dr. Mar­tin Uppen­brink, togeth­er with the State of Bran­den­burg, rep­re­sent­ed by Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Matthias Platzeck, the largest at the time Large-scale con­ser­va­tion project of nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive impor­tance, with a finan­cial vol­ume of 60 mil­lion DM. The map shows the planned zon­ing, i.e. the core area with a size of approx­i­mate­ly 11,500 hectares and the project area. That Ripar­i­an strip project was uni­lat­er­al­ly and pre­ma­ture­ly can­celed in 2000 by the then Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Birth­ler (SPD), the funds made avail­able for Bran­den­burg flowed back into the fed­er­al bud­get. How­ev­er, it remains the basis for the use of funds by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends of the Ger­man-Pol­ish Euro­pean Nation­al Park Low­er Oder Val­ley e.V.

In 1995 and then amend­ed in 2006, the so far only Bran­den­burg nation­al park in the low­er Oder val­ley was found­ed by Bran­den­burg state law. The map shows the approx­i­mate­ly 10,500 hectare nation­al park area as well as the zon­ing that has exist­ed since 2006. Zone I (50% of the nation­al park) should devel­op as a so-called total reserve to a sec­ondary wilder­ness. While Zone Ia will be with­drawn from any use imme­di­ate­ly, Zone Ib will only devel­op in per­spec­tive. Zone II (also 50% of the nation­al park, i.e. a good 5,000 hectares) should con­tin­ue to serve the pro­tec­tion of species and biotopes and be used exten­sive­ly for agri­cul­ture in the long term.