The protection, the hunt and the mowing

Created: 2022-01-20 15:02

By: Andrea Graepel

The swath in the reeds has nothing to do with last Sunday's driven hunt.

According to area management, mowing trials were carried out with a soil-conserving mower.

© Iris Noerpel-Schneider

Mowed strips in the nature reserve and signs pointing to a drive hunt shortly after leaving Dießen scared Iris Noerpel-Schneider on Sunday as she drove along Birkenallee.

"Where can an animal still be an animal if not in this protected landscape," she wondered, worried about nature conservation.

However, intensive hunting such as battue is even desired by both the Ammersee-Süd protection community and the area management.

Dießen

- Reinhard Grießmeyer, managing director of the protection association, is glad that the hunting tenant took the initiative. "Because of the many wild boars, it was even a necessity," he says. Grießmeyer speaks of a "good thing" because the meadow breeders suffered from the wild boar. "That's why the lapwings have already left." The protection association even asked the hunting tenant to decimate the wild boar population. “We agreed on that.” He assures that this is ecologically harmless. "We are glad that there is someone who still hunts prey so intensively."

Area supervisor Christian Niederbichler sees it similarly. A one-off, intensive action makes more sense than recurring hunting over a longer period of time. "The disruption is much less," he says. Incidentally, the mowed strip had nothing to do with the battue, according to Niederbichler. This is not necessary for hunting. Irrespective of this, mowing attempts with soil-protecting devices would have taken place, "with special single-axle mowers". This is also a sensible intervention, "because nature conservation does not work here without mowing". In order to maintain the biodiversity of the plant world, mowing has to be carried out once a year. "Stripes that remain are used to cover wildlife." This was only a mowing attempt.

Iris Noerpel-Schneider has only been living in Diessen for a few months. She calls it a "paradise". On Sunday she found this idyll sensitively disturbed. "I don't want to pillory anyone," she says. But killing animals to save others,” seems absurd to her. With which she probably joins a whole queue of critics. The Neu-Dießenerin regrets that nature is not given more space to regulate itself. Niederbichler also wanted that, but sees the possibilities realistically limited. There are certainly projects - for example in the Swabian Donaumoos between Ulm and Lauingen. In the nature reserve, grazing with Exmoor ponies and Scottish highland cattle over an area of ​​5000 hectares shows that nature conservation and landscape conservation are not a contradiction in terms.The animals keep natural enemies away from lapwings, for example. "But 5,000 hectares means ten times the size of the southern shore of Lake Ammer," calculates Niederbichler. "We don't even have such areas." That's why everything possible is implemented as best as possible. The battue is a tried and tested means of doing this.

"I don't want to be Frau Siebenschlau, who wants to sue," assures textile designer Iris Noerpel-Schneider, who is also an author.

The signs with the reference to battue in the bird sanctuary were nevertheless shot through marrow and leg.