Second hand living space

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Gravel pits are man-made natural spaces that represent an important habitat for many protected animal and plant species.

In applied ecology , second-hand habitats are habitats that have either been specially created by humans for nature conservation , or formerly natural habitats that have already been influenced by humans and that are made closer to nature through targeted measures. The goals are, for example, to increase biodiversity or the settlement of organisms that are beneficial from the point of view of nature conservation.

Concept history

Otto Koenig recognized that man-made habitats are necessary for the preservation of the Great Bustard

The importance of secondary habitats for nature conservation has been an issue in Germany since the early 1970s. The term probably comes from the gravel pit revitalization . In Austria, the term “second-hand living space” is often associated with Otto Koenig . Otto Koenig also got to know the concept in the circle of the Ecology group, which was formed in 1972 around well-known nature conservation activists, biologists and publicists such as Hubert Weinzierl , Konrad Lorenz , Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt , Paul Leyhausen , Horst Stern and Heinz Sielmann . Koenig visited this group at least once, around 1980. He was one of the first to use this term at the beginning of the 1980s in connection with the revitalization of reservoirs at the then planned (further) hydropower plants on Kamp , Lower Austria, and later (1984) as an argument for this Planned and never realized hydroelectric power plant Hainburg on the Danube below Vienna. Koenig himself ascribes the term “second-hand habitat” to artificial guillotine rocks at the Heligoland ornithological station, which he heard about during a visit to the ornithological station, where a guillotine rock was to be made from concrete, “better against the storm and the waves of the North Sea Could resist when the constantly crumbling sandstone ... "

practice

Today, the initiation of near-natural habitats by means of targeted measures is common practice. In the implementation of requirements in nature conservation procedures and EIA procedures , in accordance with the EU directives , but also in nature conservation laws, the restoration and improvement of habitats that have been changed by human activity is now a matter of course. Examples:

  • Dry grassland in the cultivated landscape requires regular grazing or mowing so that bushes and trees do not overflow
  • Intensive commercial forests are being developed back into forests with tree species that are suitable for the stand, and the proportion of dead wood is increased
  • former humid habitats are being watered again
  • the networking between habitats is z. B. restored by green bridges
  • the proportion of fallow land in intensively agricultural areas is increased
  • the flow speed of rivers is reduced by structural measures and the permeability for fish migrations (e.g. through fish ladders ) is restored

Many of these measures affect habitats that have been impaired in the past; they are often requested and implemented as compensation measures for interference. In a narrower sense, “second-hand living space” is still used today in gravel pit revitalization. The concept still plays a central role in projects run by the Heinz Sielmann Foundation .

discussion

The concept of the second-hand habitat contrasts with the concept of conservative nature conservation. Conservative conservationists sometimes use the term with a negative connotation as a contrast to natural areas, i.e. natural areas that were created or preserved without human intervention. Today, the majority of habitats in Europe, from the arable landscapes of the lowlands, to the alluvial forests of regulated rivers, the forests used for forestry, to the alpine pastures of the mountains, which are characterized by livestock and grazing, can be classified as influenced by humans.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dingethal, FJ, Jürging, P., Kaule, G., Weinzierl, W .: Gravel pit and landscape. Manual on sand and gravel mining, recultivation and renaturation . Paul Parey Publishing House, Hamburg 1985.
  2. ^ Taschwer, K., Föger, B .: Konrad Lorenz - Biography . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2003.
  3. ↑ Otto Koenig: Nature conservation at the turn . Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1990, p. 139 .
  4. ↑ U. Schmid, M. Nebel: Nature in the city - second-hand living spaces. Stuttgart contributions to nature conservation
  5. ↑ Second-hand living space. In: www.kreis-ahrweiler.de. Retrieved July 13, 2016 .
  6. ↑ otti wilmanns: Ecological Plant Sociology . Quelle and Meyer, Heidelberg, Wiesbaden 1993.