Review and out­look 2014/2015

 

The past year 2014 was char­ac­ter­ized by the imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­vi­sion­al prop­er­ty assign­ment as part of the com­pa­ny floor reor­ga­ni­za­tion. With unnec­es­sary hec­tic and many changes, the old con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ships had to be adapt­ed in accor­dance with the new own­er­ship struc­ture. The asso­ci­a­tion suc­ceed­ed in doing this in a tech­ni­cal­ly high­ly com­pe­tent and noise­less man­ner. In addi­tion to all sorts of dis­ad­van­tages, the larg­er field blocks are also def­i­nite­ly an advan­tage when it comes to leas­ing and using. Most of the areas were leased to the pre­vi­ous users, albeit sub­ject to nature con­ser­va­tion requirements.

One third of the grass­land locat­ed in the nation­al park is usu­al­ly giv­en to the ten­ants with the ear­li­est pos­si­ble use date of June 30th, one third by August 30th, if a corn­crake or reed war­bler has been detect­ed, and one third with the oblig­a­tion to mow and close these areas Clear or keep short grass by por­tion wil­low at the begin­ning of the breed­ing sea­son of each year. The asso­ci­a­tion is clear­ly plac­ing the empha­sis on species and biotope pro­tec­tion mea­sures on the few remain­ing areas in Zone II of the nation­al park, includ­ing on the 35 hectares of cone pri­or­i­ty areas.

The asso­ci­a­tion is pri­mar­i­ly a nature con­ser­va­tion asso­ci­a­tion. In 2014, he raised funds to cre­ate a new orchard mead­ow with old stan­dard vari­eties on two hectares in the Barn­im dis­trict in the spring of 2015, to set up nest­ing aids, for exam­ple for ospreys, and to sup­port farm­ers in struc­tur­ing their large fields through hedges and woods to pro­tect them from ero­sion and at the same time to make a con­tri­bu­tion to biodiversity.

For 2015, the asso­ci­a­tion plans to take over the care of a neglect­ed orchard mead­ow near Mescherin, lat­er a reju­ve­na­tion and expan­sion is also planned. Orchards serve eco­log­i­cal diver­si­ty and pro­vide very dif­fer­ent habi­tats in a small space. But they require exten­sive main­te­nance. Thank­ful­ly, there are also mem­bers of the asso­ci­a­tion and nature lovers on a vol­un­tary basis. This is how it has to be, peo­ple in their home­land have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their envi­ron­ment in a decen­tral­ized man­ner and inde­pen­dent­ly. The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion pro­vides the nec­es­sary assistance. 

The association’s agri­cul­tur­al oper­a­tion has been trans­ferred to Öko Agrar GmbH Unteres Oder­tal, which has also tak­en over the “aurochs” breed­ing. Cur­rent­ly 63 cat­tle and 9 hors­es graze on 170 hectares in the Lunow-Stolper Pold­er. They are very well received by vis­i­tors and res­i­dents and the press is pos­i­tive through­out Ger­many, which brings sym­pa­thy points for the Low­er Oder Valley.

Before the dis­trict court of Frank­furt / Oder as an agri­cul­tur­al court, the dis­trict of Barn­im (Agri­cul­tur­al Office) failed in 2013 with the attempt to exer­cise a right of first refusal vis-à-vis the asso­ci­a­tion with the help of the Real Estate Trans­fer Act. The Agri­cul­tur­al Court over­turned the refusal of the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor of the Barn­im dis­trict of 08.08.2012, on the grounds that clos­er inves­ti­ga­tions had shown that there was no inter­est­ed buy­er at all who would have been will­ing and able to par­tic­i­pate in a pub­lic ten­der­ing pro­ce­dure from Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion to pur­chase the areas adver­tised pub­licly by the BVVG. The agri­cul­tur­al coöper­a­tive “Oder­tal” e. G. Lüder­s­dorf had only agreed to pay a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er pur­chase price than one and a half times the expert mar­ket val­ue. This means that the agri­cul­tur­al land remains in the pos­ses­sion of the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion and can be entered as prop­er­ty in the land reg­is­ter. The Barn­im dis­trict has waived a pos­si­ble com­plaint, prob­a­bly because of the obvi­ous hopelessness.

In the future, the asso­ci­a­tion will con­cen­trate on its nature con­ser­va­tion tasks. The envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion is tak­en over by the Inter­na­tion­al­park Unteres Oder­tal GmbH (Bran­den­burg Acad­e­my “Schloss Criewen”, wilder­ness school and nation­al park lab­o­ra­to­ry Teero­fen­brücke), the organ­ic agri­cul­ture by the Öko Agrar GmbH Unteres Odertal.

The Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion will con­tin­ue to work with oth­er nature con­ser­­va­­tion-ori­en­t­ed asso­ci­a­tions and foun­da­tions. As ear­ly as 2013, he con­clud­ed new part­ner­ships and raised funding.

Thomas Berg
CEO