Bavaria's excursion regions are struggling with an enormous amount of rubbish in the pandemic.
Influencer Magdalena Kalus is now the nature conservation ambassador at Kochel and Walchensee - and promotes active garbage collection and more consideration.
Rethinking is sorely needed: Strangers recently even sunk a Dixi toilet in the lake.
Walchensee
- The nose is running, the bladder is squeezing. Then the handkerchief lands in the bushes. Paper does rot. That's right, but it can take up to five years. And neither apple clumps nor banana peels do better as legacies on the summit. “Did you know that it even takes a banana three years to make it?” Magdalena Kalus asks into her cell phone camera. The 34-year-old runs the Instagram channel “You are an Adventure Story” together with Anja Schneider. More than 66,000 hiking enthusiasts can be provided with tour and equipment tips as well as pictures in front of a breathtaking mountain backdrop. Kalus excursion is not about that colorful world today.
It stands below the Herzogstand summit on a rock plateau that is only a few square meters in size.
It is a test: How littered is the popular mountain really?
Plastic splinters, handkerchiefs, crown caps, a banana peel and lots of cigarette butts: Kalus can show a clear result after just three minutes.
“Terrifying: yes.
Surprisingly: no ”, is her conclusion when she looks at the garbage heap.
There are even two filled dog poop bags.
“That's disgusting,” she scolds the camera.
It's not the first time recently that it has become so evident.
She is actually a cheerful person, but this ruthlessness enrages her.
Magdalena Kalus becomes nature conservation ambassador in Tölzer Land
Kalus lives at the Walchensee. She is out and about in nature at least five times a week. Whether jogging on the lakeshore or hiking, the garbage catches her eye everywhere: cans, disposable grills, pizza boxes, packaging - all of this comes from day trippers and wild campers. Kalus now often leaves the house with garbage bags. On the way she packs up the leftover rubbish.
Daniel Weickel, head of tourism at Kochel and Walchensee, courageously lends a hand when he's out and about. He's also not afraid to speak to people directly and ask them to take their rubbish back with them. If the 34-year-old has his children with him, he now lets go of them. "I often hear strong hostility there," he says. "Some demonstratively cram the public toilets full with packaging waste because there are only a few rubbish bins on the lakeshore."
The pandemic has hit the small communities in the excursion regions hard: nature, the locals, the authorities - everyone is groaning under the pressure of the crowds of people who make pilgrimages to the turquoise-green lakes and the mountains.
Not only the garbage is a big problem.
“Instagram does its part,” says Weickel.
“If you see beautiful pictures online, you want to go there yourself.” Nature hardly has time to relax.
“Hikers often dismount after midnight,” he says.
"The first to rise for sunrise." That is legal.
To spend the night with sleeping bag and tent upstairs but not.
Corona in Bavaria: Excursion rush to Kochel and Walchensee
Two rangers are already patrolling the nature reserve on the banks of the Walchensee because of the rubbish offenders and wild campers.
Not yet at Herzogstand and Jochberg.
“But it would be necessary,” says Weickel, who keeps observing campfires.
Even if there is a risk of forest fire.
Many people lack consideration.
Last year climbers acted willfully on the Jochberg: "They removed around 200 meters of mountain pines with chainsaws in order to have more space on the rock," says Weickel.
It was only last weekend that vandalism broke out again: Unknown people overturned nine mobile toilets on the south bank.
Two of them pulled them out into the street.
They threw another one from a bridge into the Walchensee.
The watchtower and police waded through excrement and chemicals during the rescue.
+
A Dixi toilet was sunk in Walchensee: the water rescue service and the police had to laboriously rescue the mobile toilet.
© Wasserwacht
This targeted environmental pollution makes the trained veterinarian Kalus angry.
Weickel also says: “You don't learn solutions to such problems at the tourism school.” The “Nature conservation begins with you” initiative is now supposed to provide more information and consideration.
Kalus is not an advertising face, but a nature conservation ambassador.
Instagram: Collecting garbage on your doorstep under #NaturschutzBeginntMitDir
“We take an incredible amount from nature.
I include myself and my job here, ”she says.
In order to give something back, you don't need to plant rainforest trees. “It's easier: we can start right outside the front door.” So on Whitsunday, Kalus went to collect rubbish for the first time.
She found ten kilograms on the popular Heimgarten-Herzogstand route.
She called on Instagram to participate.
From the Isar floodplains to Lower Saxony, people responded to the virtual call and shared their success under the slogan "Nature conservation begins with you".
Kalus now wants to organize such campaigns every month.
On June 19, she wants to go out again.
If Corona allows it, she also wants to unclean the mountains in groups.
Their hope: whoever has collected once, is guaranteed not to leave organic rubbish lying around anymore.