Great Moor (Gifhorn)

Great bog
Peat cutting area
location	North-east of Gifhorn , in the Gifhorn district in Lower Saxony
surface	2,720 ha
Identifier	NSG BR 051
WDPA ID	555537429
Geographical location	52 ° 34 '  N , 10 ° 39'  E Coordinates: 52 ° 33 '46 "  N , 10 ° 38' 38"  E
Sea level	from 52 m to 72 m
Setup date	December 18, 1984
administration	NLWKN

The Great Moor near Gifhorn is part of the north-west German high moor district, which stretches across the Ice Age Geest areas from the Netherlands to the eastern border of Lower Saxony . The moor originally comprised an area of ​​approx. 5,800 ha with almost 5,000 hectares of raised bog and a smaller proportion of fens . The peat layer reaches a thickness of almost 6 meters in places. Individual sub-areas have their own names, such as Stüder-Moor, Hestenmoor or Weißes Moor .

location

The moor is north of the town of Gifhorn . In the east it is bounded by the Elbe-Seiten Canal . In the south lies the town of Triangel , in the west the moor extends to Wesendorf . In the north is the place Schönewörde . Originally as a Moor colony site founded Neudorf-Platendorf whose village street the longest is around six kilometers long straight road through Lower Saxony, extends into the marsh from the south.

Map of the Great Moor from 1780

The Great Moor fills the Ise valley basin over a length of 15 km and a width between 2 and 6 km. About 49 km² of the original 58 km² of the moor are still preserved today. They are in varying degrees of degeneration due to peat extraction and cultivation.

Reclamation and use

Up to the end of the 17th century, only the edge areas of the moor were used as pastures for cattle and for peat cutting by hand . Until about 1870 the central and northern parts were almost untouched. The cultivation took off in 1795 in the south with the two on the drawing board designed peat New Village and Platendorf one. They were each built into the moor as a kilometer-long, parallel road embankment from the direction of Gifhorn to the northeast. This marked the beginning of the excavation of drainage canals and industrial potting , which reached its peak after 1945. In the 1960s there were around 14 peat factories that produced around 60,000 tons of burned peat and 150,000 tons of manure peat annually. In Westerbeck (municipality of Sassenburg ) there is still a peat factory today that is engaged in industrial peat extraction.

Flora and fauna

In 1984 a sub-area with an area of ​​2,720 hectares was placed under nature protection. It is one of the largest nature reserves in Lower Saxony . Of this, an area of ​​2,630 hectares has been designated as an FFH area for the protection of the Great Moss Maiden, 2,617 hectares became an EU bird sanctuary . Re-wetting is intended to create a retreat for plants and animals that are bound to wetlands. In addition, the regeneration of the raised bog should be promoted. There pipe grass , bog heath and cotton grass have developed. In the Great Moor there was once one of the largest populations of the black grouse in Germany. In 1963 there were still 850 black grouse counted, in 1982 only 20 specimens and meanwhile the black grouse is considered to be extinct in this area. So far, around 150 animal and 40 vascular plant species have been identified in the Great Moor that are considered endangered in Lower Saxony, eleven of which are even threatened with extinction. Here live z. B. adder , crane , goat milker , woodlark , common snipe , gray shrike and stonechat . In the summer of 2003, a large mammal grazing project began under the direction of the NABU district association Gifhorn . Backbred aurochs and conical ponies were resettled on an area of ​​initially 30 hectares . The existing grassland is partly grazed by moorland snakes and extensively used by mowing .

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  Peat-laden moorland trolleys near Westerbeck

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  Peat processing plant in Westerbeck on the edge of the Great Moor

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  Potted area, today meadow, in the background Neudorf-Platendorf

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  Drainage ditch in the bog

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  Road through the moor

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  View towards the moor

Educational trail

In Westerbeck, a district of the municipality of Sassenburg , two nature trails begin that run outside the nature reserve in the southern part of the Great Moor. There is a 12 km long cycle path and a 5 km long footpath. There is also the possibility of exploring the area by moor railway.

Forest fire disaster in 1975

A runaway wildfire near the village Stüde on August 8, 1975, part of the fire in the Lueneburg Heath . The field fire spread quickly from Stüde and jumped over the Elbe Lateral Canal , so that the Great Moor caught fire. On the first day of the fire, a fire engine near Neudorf-Platendorf was run over by a fire roller. Two firefighters suffered serious burns. At the same time, other fires broke out in the Lüneburg Heath , which led to a fire disaster and was in the news nationwide. The fires in the woods were only extinguished after 9 days on August 17, 1975. The moor fire in the Great Moor smoldered underground for weeks.

literature

• Gerhard Höhn: European workshop: Black grouse protection today. Perspectives for the sustainable protection of black grouse in Central European habitats , game, etc. Dog, No. 13, 42-46, Nassau.
• Detlev Herbold: From the vision to the idea to the project , Nds. Jäger 11, 46-47, Hanover.
• Lower Saxony State Office for Ecology - Nature Conservation Department: Protection, care and development of grassland in Lower Saxony. Efficiency of nature conservation measures , [Reproduction maschr. Ms.], 177 p., 17 fig., 29 tab., [Hildesheim].
• Mathias Fischer: On the grasshopper fauna (Insecta: Saltatoria) in the Great Moor near Gifhorn (SO Lower Saxony), Braunschw. Natural history Schrr. 6, H. 2, 281–291, 2 figs., 1 tab., Braunschweig.
• J. Koch; H. Wehner: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) in peat: microscopic, fuel chemical and chromatographic investigations on a peat profile from the Great Moor , Gifhorn, TK 3429 Wesendorf./ [Vervielf. maschr. Ms., o. S.], BGR, Hanover.
• Johannes Melter; Matthias Schreiber: Important breeding and resting bird areas in Lower Saxony. An annotated list of areas and species as a basis for the implementation of the European Bird Protection Directive , Vogelkdl. Berr. Lower., Vol. 32, Sonderh., 320 S., 9 fig., 6 tab., Goslar.
• Werner Oldekop; Friedmund Melchert; Bernd Hermenau: 50 years of Limikolen observation in the area of ​​Braunschweig , Milvus Braunschweig 19, 1–35, 38 fig., Braunschweig.
• Bernd Hermenau; Peter Velten: Population estimate of selected breeding bird species in the NSG "Großes Moor" near Gifhorn from 1994 to 2001 , Milvus Braunschweig 20, 7–17, 5 figs., Braunschweig.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NABU Gifhorn: Das Große Moor ( Memento from May 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ The peat railway in Westerbeck ( Memento from August 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ NABU on maintenance measures
4. ↑ NABU Gifhorn grazing project ( Memento from January 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Map overviews of the nature trails

Web links

Commons : Großes Moor (Gifhorn)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Nature reserve "Großes Moor" in the database of the Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation (NLWKN)