Poutafontana

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Poutafontana - also Pouta-Fontana - is a moorland and lake landscape in the canton of Valais in Switzerland and a nature reserve . The area is located in central Valais to the left of the Rhone , which has been straightened in this section, in the area of ​​the municipality of Grône and the city of Sierre at around 499 meters above sea level. The village of Pramagnon, a district of Grône, is close to the nature reserve. The protected part of the natural area is 32 hectares and forms the largest wetland biotope in the canton of Valais. However, it is missing from the registers of nationally significant nature reserves.

Moorland in the Poutafontana area

In 1948, the Valais State Council placed a wetland in this zone under protection at the request of the French-speaking Swiss bird protection association Nos Oiseaux . Around 1955, nature conservation organizations , first and foremost the Diana von Siders hunting company , fought against the plans of the then still independent municipality of Granges (since 1972 a district of the city of Sion) to use the Poutafontana area as a public garbage dump . On June 9, 1959, the canton acquired the southwestern part of the marshland and declared the area a nature reserve. In 1988, the canton enlarged the reserve by purchasing an adjacent area.

Surname

The field name of the landscape comes from the French-Provencal dialect of Lower Valais, the patois . It appears on old cards in the form "Poutaz Fontana". The final z in French Provençal names is usually not pronounced, which is how the shortened spelling “Pouta” was created. “Poutaz Fontana” in German means “spring of swamp cherries” or, more generally, “foul-smelling waterhole”, because the swamp cherry ( putier in French , in patois poutaz ), a shrub or tree that often occurs in alluvial forests, gives off an unpleasant smell. Accordingly, it is originally a combination of a hydronym , i.e. the name of a water body, with a plant name. Today the original name is barely understood and the field name is used for the entire area with the dry sites and forests. The steep mountain flank in the south of the nature reserve, below Nax , is now called Les Rares de Poutafontana .

fauna and Flora

The former meadow landscape near Grône is home to diverse communities and, with the wide expanses of water, forms a valuable stopover for bird migration across the Alps . It forms the largest wetland biotope in the canton of Valais. Systematic counts have been used to observe over 180 species of migratory birds, some of which are only found in this area in Valais. In the past, ornithologists mainly documented the stay of migratory birds and published it in the ornithological reports of the Bulletin de la Murithienne , but the biologist Antoine Sierro also examined the native breeding birds around 1990 on behalf of the Commission of the Protected Area and the Cantonal Environmental Protection Agency . Representatives of the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach also contributed to the knowledge of the bird population .

Various bird species came under pressure because of the changed living conditions in the Rhone Valley. As the "types promotion concept birds Valais» pointed out in 2011, has itself in the nature reserve Poutafontana the Drosselrohrsänger not bred since the 1990s.

Apart from migratory birds, the biotope offers a habitat for many animal species , including fish and around 50 native bird species such as ducks and herons, as well as beavers , which the cantonal agency for hunting, fishing and wild animals introduced into the nature reserve in 1973, fox and reptiles , Amphibians and dragonflies.

The plant population in the nature reserve comprises around 160 species. In the southern section, open swamp and reed areas with some shrubbery and individual poplars , alders and oaks have developed between the shallow waters on firm ground and silted up zones , while in the northern part there is a remainder of the alluvial forest . The fir trees that used to be in the area have died due to the controlled water balance.

A decline in insects has been observed in the Poutafontana reserve since the 2010s . For decades, residents of the localities of Pramagnon and Grône have complained of a severe mosquito plague in the area around the marshland. An expert opinion carried out on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency and the ETH Zurich recommended various measures against the reproduction of mosquitoes, 17 of which are found in the nature reserve. Occasionally one stepped to mow down the extensive reeds standing in the shallow water, where the breeding grounds of the insects had been identified. The area is regularly flooded with a sluice built around 1980 in order to stop the encroachment on the one hand and the reproduction of mosquitoes on the other. The insect larvae living in the water are combated with insecticides. In 2016, a major mosquito control campaign took place in the area, which led to public controversy because other insect species could also be affected by the measures and because, with the decline in insects , various bird species, including migratory birds, are also lacking food can.

The strongly fluctuating climatic conditions at this point have a not insignificant influence on the communities in the nature reserve. The landscape near Pramagnon lies in the shadow of the high and steep mountainside of Nax for four months in winter, and the waters of Poutafontana are frozen over for a long time. In summer the temperatures often change extremely because the Rhone Valley in the vicinity of Sierre and Sion is the landscape with the most hours of sunshine in Switzerland.

Landscape history

River landscape near Grône around 1845

In order to understand the aquatic and biological peculiarities of the Poutafontana nature reserve , one must look at its wider surroundings and their history. Because today's biotope is not an old, untouched natural landscape, but owes its origin and characteristics to a series of human interventions in this section of the Rhone Valley over the past 200 years.

The soils in the area of ​​the Granges and Grône valley plains lie on an approximately 300-meter-thick sequence of river and stream sediments, lake deposits and glacial moraines. In the final phase of the Ice Age, when the Rhone Glacier only covered the Upper Valais, the Anniviers Glacier flowed out into the valley near Siders and Sion for a long time and brought moraine debris from the southern side valley out into the Eben. In the south of the area, a small hill protrudes a few meters above the river level. The older editions of the national map of Switzerland show other such peaks on the area of ​​the factory premises. Like the larger heights near Granges and Sierre, they are the remains of the great post-glacial, prehistoric landslide of Sierre and have long aroused the interest of geologists. The only hill still in the nature reserve today, as a dry site , offers special living conditions in the Poutafontana biotope , the waters of which are also connected to the groundwater layer of the Rhone plain.

The nature reserve is bounded in the northwest by the left bank next to the canalised Rhone and in the southeast by the road between Grône and Bramois . The space forms a strongly changed relic of the original river landscape with a meandering river course from the time before the first Walliser Rhone correction, which took place from 1863 to 1893. On the early plans from the 16th to the early 19th century, the image of the meadow landscape in the wide Rhone plain is recorded, which was created over thousands of years above the alluvial fans of the Lienne and Borgne torrents through flooding . On the 12-kilometer route from Sierre to Bramois, the valley floor has a gradient of just 20 meters. The Rhone, a mountain river, has often flooded the area around the former town of Granges in earlier centuries and sometimes changed its course when the water was strong . In historical times its old river bed was still south of Granges and near Grône leads directly through the area of ​​today's nature reserve. Construction work for flood protection has been documented since the 16th century . In 1695 the Rhone broke through the old protective dam during a heavy flood and paved a new path on the northern edge of the plain, where it still runs today. The current municipal boundary between Sierre and the villages of Réchy and Grône still roughly corresponds to the earlier river bed, and the historic La Croix du Pont crossroads on the outskirts of Grône reminds of the location of the former bridge over the Rhone, which has long since disappeared there.

Large parts of the area around the medieval, abandoned town of Granges, which was situated on a striking castle hill, has always consisted of swamp and reed areas with scattered agricultural plots. The landscape before the river correction with a wide bed load is shown on the Siegfried map from 1845. In 1844 the French Thomas Bunton and Thomas Nodler built a first small dam next to the Rhone and a drainage canal , the Grand canal Nodler-Brenton , to protect the land near Granges with the approval of the canton . The other editions of the national maps of Switzerland after the middle of the 19th century show the progress of the Rohne correction and at Grône still show the branching channels of the Rhone river bed, from which the Poutafontana swamp has since emerged. The largest lake is the Lac de Brèche, which is said to have received its name because the Rhône, which had only recently been canalized, destroyed the left bank at this point in the year of the heavy flooding in Switzerland in 1868 and flooded the plain again through the breach.

With the construction of the continuous tail units next to the new Rhone bed from Siders to Bramois, the surrounding parts of the floodplain landscape were cut off from the dynamic river development and silted up or developed into wetlands with stagnant water, which probably made the area attractive for migratory birds. With the exception of the Poutafontana area, practically all of the former floodplain areas above Martigny have been drained, cultivated and converted into intensive crops or built over after the great Rhone correction. In the 20th century, the settlement area of ​​Granges and Grône with important infrastructures expanded strongly over the former river plain, which is why the flood protection dam in this area is hardened with the Third Rhone Correction .

Some water areas at Pramagnon and Granges were created or enlarged by gravel mining. In the area of ​​today's Lac de la Corne , the company Solioz & Merkli removed so much gravel by the end of the 20th century that it now forms the only deep body of water in the Poutafontana protected area . After the end of the gravel extraction, the company built a bathing beach on the lakeshore in collaboration with the municipality of Grône and nearby parking spaces and an information center. The municipality of Grône has set up a footpath around the reserve and information boards.

Further ponds follow north of the golf course to the amusement park Happyland near Granges; They too have an important value for the natural landscape on the Rhone, but are also not part of the Poutafontana protected area .

In the far south-east, the nature reserve borders on the Valbéton concrete plant , which is partly located on the southernmost part of the original Poutafontana wetland . In addition, the transport company Lathion has been managing a quarry on the Paujes mountainside since the 1960s , in which it mines the dolomite and lime, and a recycling plant for building materials and a landfill for inert materials.

Especially in the northern part of the landscape there is a remnant of the alluvial forest , which is slowly turning into an ordinary forest due to the lack of river dynamics. The tree population has increased significantly since it was placed under protection in 1959. To the south of the reserve lies the Les Clots de Pramagnon vineyard and above it the natural mountain forest on the steep slope of Les Rares de Poutafontana .

In the northeast, the La Brèche golf course , also called golf de Poutafontana , which was built around 1988 and initiated by the city of Sierre, borders almost on the nature reserve; The sports field operated by the Golf Club de Sierre is 18 hectares in size and is located on land that was formerly part of the Poutafontana swamp area and was later used by a gravel works. WWF was involved in the planning of the golf course , and in the execution of the project, instead of rows of poplars on the Rhone, mixed forest areas were planted and the Dérotchia canal was remodeled in a natural way. In February 1992 the Federal Interior Department issued the building permit for the golf course. The planned enlargement of the golf area closer to the reserve in 2003 led to controversies in the region, in which the Amis des gouilles de Granges-Grône association was particularly committed to the interests of the public.

The former tributaries of the canalized Rhone, especially the Rèche , and the drainage ditches of the plain west of Sierre are merged in the Canal de Crêtelongue, the Canal de Chippis, dug in 1870, and the Canal Neuf . These waters flow into the La Dérotchia stream in the area of ​​the golf course . This torrent flows from a short southern side valley into the Rhone plain, where it has raised an alluvial fan on which the village of Pramagnon lies. In the lower reaches it crosses the Poutafontana moorland and to the west of it reaches the Rhone via a pumping station.

On the Canal de Crêtelongue, above the protected area, is the Granges wastewater treatment plant , which went into operation in 1977 and carries away the treated wastewater from several villages through the canal. The plant is operated on behalf of the Association intercommunale de la STEP de Granges . It processes wastewater from an area to the left of the Rhone with some quarters in the city of Sierre, the municipalities of Grône and Mont-Noble and the localities of Réchy and Vercorin in the municipality of Chalais, as well as from the mountainside on the right of the Rhone from the municipality of Lens with part of the Crans and holiday complex from hamlets in a small area of Crans-Montana . The wastewater treatment plant is one of the largest in the canton and therefore supplies the protected area with a considerable amount of water, some of which comes from outside the natural catchment area of ​​the Dérotchia . From 2016 to 2018 it received a system for better treatment of the sewage sludge and will be expanded from 2020, among other things, to reduce the proportion of micropollutants and phosphorus that have not been filtered out so far, which can also have a negative impact on the Poutafontana protected area . Over time, too many nutrients from the agricultural area up the valley reach the protected area and with eutrophication, i.e. over-fertilization, the algae develop excessively.

The 220 kV high-voltage line, which was built in 1953 and connects the Creux-de-Chippis substation near Sierre with the substation near Chamoson , runs through the nature reserve . Four lattice masts of this line are in the biotope. In order to increase the capacity for energy transport in Valais, the network operator Swissgrid is having the new Chamoson-Chippis high-voltage line built on the southern mountainside , and then removing the existing overhead line.

A section of the national cycle route 1 Rhone Route leads over the paved path on the dead straight left bank of the Rhone . From this path and from a viewing platform built next to it, there is an open view over the water areas of the nature reserve.

The A 9 Rhone Valley motorway , built in the 1990s immediately north of the Rhone, is located near Saint-Léonard in a cut several meters deep to protect the neighboring nature and bird reserve Poutafontana from traffic pollution. The Poutafontana rest area requested by the city of Sion was not realized.

In 1992, the Valais Nature Museum dedicated a special exhibition to the Poutafontana area and conservation area .

See also

Coordinates: 46 ° 14 '49.6 "  N , 7 ° 26' 12"  E ; CH1903:  five hundred ninety-nine thousand eight hundred forty-seven  /  121742

literature

  • Benoît Bressoud, Pierre-Alain Oggier, François Catzeflis: Etude botanique de la réserve de Pouta-Fontana, Grône (VS). In: Bulletin de la Murithienne , 94, 1977, pp. 85-11.
  • Vittorio Delucchi, Willy Matthey: Les Espèces culicidiennes (Dipt., Culicidae) de la réserve de Pouta Fontana (Valais central), étude écologique et démoustication. ETH Zurich, 1979.
  • Michel. Desfayes: Les oiseaux des marais de Grône. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne, 67, 1966, pp. 191-196.
  • Michel Desfayes: Flore aquatique et palustre du Valais et du Chablais vaudois. In: Les Cahiers des Sciences naturelles, 1st Sion 1996.
  • Michel Desfayes: Flore aquatique et palustre du Valais et du Chablais vaudois. Additions. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne , 125, 2008, pp. 99-124.
  • R. Hainard: Les oiseaux du marais de Grône. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne, 52, 1935, pp. 91-93.
  • Thierry Largey: Evolution de la végétation de la réserve naturelle de Pouta-Fontana, Grône et Sierre. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne, 115, 1997, pp. 28-43.
  • P.-A. Oggier: Pouta-Fontana. Plan de gestion. Service de l'environnement du canton du Valais. 1983. Bulletin de la Murithienne, 115, 1997, pp. 28-43.
  • Jean-Claude Praz: Contribution à l'étude de la faune de la reserve de Grône. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne, 85, 1968, pp. 77-88.
  • Jean-Claude Praz: Pouta-Fontana, swamp in the Rhone plain. Cantonal Natural History Museum. Manners 1993.
  • Jean-Claude Praz: Aperçu de la faune du marais de Grône, en Valais. In: Nos Oiseaux , 30, 1970, pp. 201-214.
  • Grégoire Raboud: Les espèces culicidiennes de la réserve de Pouta-fontana. Etude écologique et démoustication. Zurich 1979.
  • Grégoire Raboud: Mosquitoes (Diptera, Culicidae) of the reservation of Pouta Fontana, central Valais, Switzerland: ecological study and control. 1980.
  • Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992.
  • A. Zurwerra: Inventaire des insectes aquatiques de la réserve naturelle de Pouta-Fontana et proposition d'aménagement (Commune de Grône et de sierre). In: Bulletin de la Murithienne, 106, 1988, pp. 51-73.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Poutafontana nature reserve is not on the official lists of the Swiss Ramsar areas or the bird reserves and floodplain areas of national importance ( floodplains ).
  2. ↑ Protection de la faune. In: Le Nouvelliste, May 17, 1991.
  3. ^ Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992, p. 3.
  4. ^ Adolphe Gros: Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de lieu de la Savoie. La Fontaine de Siloé 2004, p. 501.
  5. ↑ Chemin de la Peutasse. www.ge.ch, accessed on August 17, 2020.
  6. ^ Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992.
  7. ↑ Bertrand Posse ( inter alia): Species promotion concept for birds in Wallis. Sempach ornithological station and department for forest and landscape of the canton of Valais. Salgesch and Sitten 2011, p. 100.
  8. ↑ Grône. Les castors laborieux. In: Le Nouvelliste , June 12, 2001.
  9. ↑ Des castors qui vivent heureux. In: Le Nouvelliste, April 17, 1974.
  10. ^ Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992, p. 8.
  11. ↑ Une BA en faveur de la protection de la nature. In: Le Nouvelliste, April 17, 1975.
  12. ^ Pouta Fontana. What's the matter with the insects? . Claudia Schnieper's blog. June 2, 2016, accessed August 12, 2020.
  13. ↑ Le Nouvelliste May 25, 2016.
  14. ^ Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992, p. 30.
  15. ↑ Number of hours of sunshine at selected measuring stations in Switzerland in 2019.
  16. ↑ Damian Glenz ( inter alia): Caractérisation de l'aquifère superficiel de la plaine du Rhône entre Sierre et Evionnaz (Suisse). In: Emmanuel Reynard (et al., Ed.): Le Rhône, entre nature et société. Cahiers de Vallesia 29 Sion 2015, pp. 109–128.
  17. ↑ Marcel Burri: La géologie du quaternaire aux environs de sierre. In: Bulletin de la société vaudoise des sciences naturelles, 66, 1955, pp. 1-14.
  18. ^ Fritz Nussbaum: The landslide landscape of Sierre in Wallis. In: Actes de la Société hélvetique des Sciences naturelles, 122, 1942, pp. 11-12.
  19. ↑ Marcel Burri: La géologie du quaternaire aux environs de Sierre. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne , 72, 1955, pp. 1-14.
  20. ↑ Glenz (and others): Caractérisation de l'aquifère superficiel de la plaine du Rhône entre Sierre et Evionnaz (Suisse). 2015.
  21. ↑ Stephanie Summermatter: The first Rhone correction and the further development of the cantonal and national hydraulic engineering policy in the 19th century. In: Vallesia, 59, 2004, pp. 199-224.
  22. ↑ Jean-Emile Tamini , Lucien Quaglia: La Châtellenie de Granges. In: The same: Châtellenie de Granges, Lens, Grône, St-Léonard avec Chalais-Chippis. St-Maurice 1942, 7–51, here p. 29.
  23. ↑ Louis Blondel : Les châteaux et le bourg de Granges. In Vallesia , 9, 1954, pp. 129-148.
  24. ^ Classe 8h Granges: Des traces du vieux Rhône. notrehistoire.ch, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  25. ^ Wallis State Archives : CH AEV, AC Granges, P 823/22. Convention passée entre Thomas Bunton, Ingénieur, à Paris, actuellement à Sion, pour lui et pour Thomas Nodler, propriétaire à Paris, et le capitaine Maurice Gillioz de Granges, député, président de la commune de Granges, qui cède 600 secteurs de terrains communaux aux premiers on the rive gauche du Rhône, à condition d'endiguer le Rhône. 1843.
  26. ^ Daniel L. Vischer : The history of flood protection in Switzerland from the beginnings to the 19th century. Bern 2003, pp. 97-103.
  27. ^ Max Honsell : The Rhone correction in the canton of Valais. In: Allgemeine Bauzeitung , 43, 1878, pp. 61–66.
  28. ↑ Des traces du vieux Rhône. notrehistoire.ch, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  29. ↑ Bressoud, Oggier, Catzeflis, 1977, p 87th
  30. ↑ Lac de la Corne. Travaux de renaturation. In: Le Nouvelliste , February 27, 2013.
  31. ↑ Maison verte de Poutafontana. In: Le Nouvelliste, April 8, 1999.
  32. ↑ Tour de Pouta Fontana - Pramagnon . www.grone.ch, accessed on August 12, 2020.
  33. ↑ the company Valbéton site
  34. ↑ Lathion Company website
  35. ↑ Etude géopédologique the vignobles de Bramois, Nax Grône et Chalais. In: Etude des terroirs viticoles valaisans . Part B. Canton of Valais undated
  36. ^ Website of the Sierre Golf Club
  37. ↑ Feu vert pour la Brèche. In: Le Nouvelliste, 14th February 1992.
  38. ↑ Bientôt 2,000 signatures. In: Le Nouvelliste, July 16, 2003.
  39. ↑ G. Romailler: Etude de l'influence of rejets des eaux de la STEP de Granges sur le biotope de la réserve de Pouta-Fontana. 1983.
  40. ↑ Réhabilitation et extension de la STEP de Granges, traitement des eaux et des boue. Espazium competitions, accessed August 13, 2020.
  41. ↑ See also: Bilan d'Epuration des eaux usées en Valais année 2018. Section Water Protection of the Canton of Valais, 2019.
  42. ^ Antoine Sierro: Les oiseaux de la reserve de Pouta-Fontana (Grône et Sierre, VS). 1992, p. 31.
  43. ^ Rhone route Andermatt – Genève (Chancy) . SwitzerlandMobility
  44. ^ Autoroute N 9. Un pont plus loin. In: Le Nouvelliste, December 12, 1990.
  45. ↑ Pouta-Fontana à l'honneur. Exposition au Musée cantonal d'histoire naturelle. In: Le Nouvelliste , May 26, 1992.