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Figure 3—The Thuringian Forest and Franconian Forest areas are a densely wooded region with agriculture.
The emergence of birch trees and spruces are driving out open landscape habitats such as
mountain and wet meadows as well as dwarf shrub heaths. Photo by Frankenwald Tourismus.
Belt is formally protected as nature conservation
areas, 38% is registered under
either the European Bird Directive
(European Union 1979) or the
European Habitats Directive (European
Union 1992). About 85% of this area is
considered intact, meaning that most of
these lands have not been degraded by
intensive farming.
Successful protection of the Green
Belt does not mean absence of all agriculture.
Instead, the idea, according to
the BUND is “to encourage as much
plant succession as possible while at
the same time allowing as much cultivation
as necessary.” This meant that
large portions of the Green Belt were
subjected to nonintervention management,
whereas in others parts, farmers
were to manage for a mosaic of perennially
rotating fallow tracts of land
alternating with forms of extensive
(sustainable) land uses and habitat
maintenance (see figure 4). Most often
these interchanging modes of management
are aimed at achieving a semiopen
cultural landscape (Kulturlandschaft),
which was characteristic for most of
the countryside prior to World War II
when industrial agriculture had not yet
gained much ground. Many species
that historically profited from low-key
cultivation can today again be encountered
at or near the Green Belt, some
of these Kulturfolger (followers of cultivation)
are white stork (Ciconia
ciconia), gray partridge (Perdix perdix),
and European hare (Lepus europaeus).
These conservation successes were
not unanimously welcomed; they also
34 International Journal of Wilderness APRIL 2011 VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1
raised some opposition. For decades
the border zone (Zonengrenze) had
the reputation of being an economic
void, a hinterland, where only the hapless
population remained, condemned
to frugal livelihoods by the lasting
Cold War between the eastern “communist”
and the western “free” bloc.
As the Iron Curtain was lifted, some
local people felt that now the conservation
movement had become their
new enemy, by infringing on their
newly gained freedoms.
A few far-thinking conservationists,
aided by historians, politicians,
and entrepreneurs, recognized that the
presumed ill fate of the hinterland was
also its special chance, a kind of unique
selling proposition. The idea was (and
still is) that both the historic landmarks
and the ecologically intact areas
could be turned into economic assets.
Thus, it would help the local residents
to a “piece of the cake” without having
to use it all. With the help of tourism
experts and local business people, the
BUND developed several dozen bookable
tourist packages for three model
regions. The project was funded by the
Figure 4—The Eichsfeld region (Lower-Saxony/Thuringia) is a traditionally used agricultural landscape
where the Green Belt runs as a strip of natural grassland and shrubland through arable land.
Photo by Heinz-Sielmann-Stiftung.