As of: February 26, 2024, 4:26 p.m
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A sign with the inscription “National Park” stands in front of the dune landscape on the eastern end of the island of Norderney.
© Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa
The Wadden Sea is a popular excursion destination.
And according to a new study, its status as a national park is a reason for almost one in five guests to visit the region.
Tönning - Do nature conservation and tourism go together?
Will the national park slow down regional economic development on the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea coast?
Experts from the University of Würzburg addressed such questions in a current study commissioned by the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park Foundation.
Conclusion: “Protecting nature does not rule out economic development in the region,” said study leader Hubert Job on Monday at the presentation of the study at the Multimar Wattforum National Park Center in Tönning.
It can be strengthened through tourism.
Job and his team surveyed more than 21,500 tourists at 14 different locations in the national park region from May 2021 to April 2022.
“The data is massively robust,” said Job.
Only Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park is more visited
According to a new study, the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park is one of the most visited compared to all 16 national parks in Germany.
Within twelve months between spring 2021 and spring 2022, the Würzburg researchers counted around 21.43 million visit days in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea.
Only the Lower Saxony counterpart counted more visit days (21.7 million) in the 2019/20 study there.
In a time comparison between the previous study from 2012/13 and the current study, the number of visit days in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea increased by 15.0 percent.
The visiting days result from the day guests and the overnight guests.
A visitor who spends seven nights in the national park region is also included in the statistics seven times.
Study: Almost every fifth guest comes because of the national park
According to the study, 76.3 percent of visitors to the national park are overnight guests and 23.7 percent are day visitors.
And: “Almost one in five people (18.2 percent) come because of the national park,” said Job.
The authors of the study put the tourism added value in 2021/22 at 826 million euros.
Of this, 18.2 percent are national park tourists in the narrower sense, accounting for 155 million euros.
These are the people who not only know about the special protection as a national park/world natural heritage site, but also gave the protected area a very important or major role in their travel decision.
In 2012/13 it was 17.1 percent.
Around 15.3 percent of all guests visited the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea region in 2019/20 because it is a national park.
In 2007, 10.9 percent of guests justified their stay with the presence of the national park.
Job explains the increase, among other things, by the fact that the Wadden Sea was only included in the Arezzo World Natural Heritage Site in 2009 and thus became better known.
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In purely mathematical terms, 5,444 people in Schleswig-Holstein could live off the tourism expenses of national park tourists in the narrower sense.
According to the information, this is 38.4 percent more than in the 2012/13 survey.
Protecting nature does not rule out economic development in the region, said Job.
The head of the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park said that the national park plays an important role, including in terms of securing family income in the region.
“A national park does not contradict economic interests,” he emphasized, also with a view to the discussion in the east of the country.
National Park for the Baltic Sea is being discussed in SH
A Baltic Sea National Park has been discussed in Schleswig-Holstein for around a year.
In March 2023, Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens) started a consultation process about it.
However, the coalition partner CDU rejects a national park.
Instead, the Union wants to improve the poor condition of the sea with the help of voluntary agreements as well as stone reefs and seagrass meadows.
During the consultations, tourism companies and associations in particular, but also many municipalities on the coast, spoke out against a national park.
They fear restrictions on water sports, for example.
Support for a national park came from environmental groups.
On Monday, nature conservation associations presented Goldschmidt with a position paper for better Baltic Sea protection.
The nature conservation policy spokeswoman for the Green parliamentary group, Silke Backsen, said, “The national park enjoys broad support on the North Sea and, in addition to its impact on marine and nature conservation, is also a tourism magnet.
Why not use these good experiences on the Baltic Sea too?” dpa