Düpenwiesen
The Düpenwiesen are an approximately 190 hectare (ha) large fen landscape that lies west of Wolfsburg and south of the Barnbruch wetland . It consists of the two protected areas Düpenwiesen and southern Düpenwiesen, which are separated by a road. The Düpenwiesen are part of the European Natura 2000 network .
location
The Düpenwiesen are bordered by the eastern Barnbruchswald in the north, the Mittellandkanal in the south, the federal motorway 39 in the east and the Weyhäuser Weg and the adjacent Barnbruchswiesen in the west. The County Road 114 ( "north tangent"), which from Wolfsburg to Gifhorn leads cuts through the protected area and divides it into the northern Düpenwiesen (120 ha) and the southern southern Düpenwiesen (70 ha). A few kilometers west in the direction of Gifhorn, south of county road 114, lies the Ilkerbruch wetland .
fauna and Flora
The area is very varied. Above all, there are extensive reed areas and Großseggenriede , which with around 100 hectares are among the largest in Lower Saxony . Green areas are used as hay pastures and cattle pastures. In between there are isolated trees and willow bushes.
The heart of the area is the Düpenteich in the southern Düpenwiesen. It is a quarry pond that was created in 1978 to remove gravel for the construction of the adjacent federal motorway 39. It is up to six meters deep and has a relatively narrow shallow water zone. Numerous species of ducks, rails and divers breed on its banks. In the north and east it is surrounded by wide reeds and great sedge areas.
The reed areas provide ideal breeding space for numerous reed-dwelling bird species such as bittern , spotted rail , reed warbler , swirl or bearded tit. The little moorhen was also found several times as a breeding bird. According to observation data, around 100 breeding bird species were found in the Düpenweise, around a third of which are on the Red List of Threatened Species .
On the Mittelland Canal as well as along some farm roads and drainage ditches there are poplar trees, alder quarries and wet meadows interspersed with willow stands. Typical breeding birds here are the puffy tit and nightingale . In the west there are some fen meadows with large deposits of narrow-leaved cottongrass and spotted orchid . Numerous meadow birds nest here; the black godwit was a breeding bird until the 1990s. Black-necked gull colonies and black-necked grebes have settled here again and again at changing locations . The little ringed plover sometimes breeds on the sandy banks and on fallow land .
Conservation history
The current appearance of wet areas with reed vegetation has only existed for a few decades. Previously, the areas were farmed extensively as grassland, but they have always been a marginal yield area. From the end of the 1920s, an area with stacking ponds (settling basins) was created for the Fallersleben sugar factory to the west and south of the Düpenteich . The waste water from the beet washing plant was discharged into the ponds and the surrounding drainage ditches. Over time, the area grew to around 50 hectares. The silt areas of the ponds, which were drained mainly in summer, were a secondary habitat and an important resting place for Limikolen . In hot summers, however, there were several botulism epidemics with numerous bird victims.
The northern part of the Düpenwiesen was placed under nature protection in 1978 and was the first nature reserve in Wolfsburg. The sugar factory continued to claim the southern Düpenwiesen for its settling basins. It was not until 1985 that it was placed under protection. The commitment of the zoologist Bernhard Grzimek contributed to this. The sugar factory was shut down in 1995 and the stacking ponds were renatured.
Endangerment of the bird world
A significant threat to the bird world in the Düpenwiesen lies in the district road 114 ("Nordtangente") which cuts through the area . The straight expressway was built in 1974 to replace the B 188 . It is very busy, especially during rush hour, as it is used by commuters from the nearby Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg .
Birds are regularly killed in collisions with vehicles, especially in the reed area. The number of victims was regularly checked over a distance of one and a half kilometers from 1979 to 1989. In the eleven years, 3046 dead birds were found on around 330 control days. This number was made up of 92 species, including numerous threatened species. The most common victims were reed-dwelling species, for example 661 reed warbler. Today the maximum speed on the road is limited to 50 km / h.
literature
- Otto Wilde: The Düpenwiesen . In: Nature reserves in the Gifhorn-Wolfsburg area , Gifhorn 1986
- Martin Flade, Jürgen Jebram: The birds of the Wolfsburg area in the field of tension between industrial city and nature , Ed. NABU, Wolfsburg 1995, ISBN 3-00-000113-1
- Gerd-Michael Heinze: Bird death on the K 114 ("Nordtangente") in the area of the Düpenwiesen - victim statistics 1979–1989 , Nature Conservation Association of the German Federation for Bird Protection - Wolfsburg district group, issue 3, Wolfsburg 1989
Web links
- Nature reserve "Düpenwiesen" in the database of the Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation (NLWKN)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinze 1989, p. literature
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 ′ 54 ″ N , 10 ° 43 ′ 24 ″ E