Schorfheide-Chorin Foundation

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Schorfheide-Chorin Foundation
Legal form: Foundation under civil law
Purpose: To bring nature conservation, ecological forest use and business management together
Chair: Elisabeth Fiege
Consist: since 2000
Founder: Fiege logistics
Foundation capital: 1 mil . €
Seat: Greven

The Schorfheide-Chorin Foundation is a private foundation of the entrepreneurial couple Elisabeth and Hugo Fiege, owners of the Fiege Logistics Group and three nature conservation associations from Uckermark . The foundation is considered a model for “private nature conservation commitment” in Brandenburg and has received two forest areas from the national natural heritage in the core of the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve from the state of Brandenburg. Areas in Germany that have been protected as permanent nature conservation areas since 2000 are designated as national natural heritage . This is done through free transfers of land and water from the property of the Federal Republic of Germany to the sponsorship of the federal states , the German Federal Environment Foundation (DBU) or nature conservation associations . The foundation is also referred to in press articles as the Schorfheide-Chorin Nature Conservation Foundation .

Origin and goals

When a large part of the forest areas in the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve was to be transferred to nature conservation institutions by resolution of the state government in Brandenburg, the Fiege couple founded the Haus der Naturpflege , Kulturlandschaft Uckermark and NABU Angermünde as a public-private at the turn of the year 2000/2001 together with the three nature conservation associations Partnership with the Schorfheide-Chorin Foundation . The entrepreneurial couple Fiege laid the financial basis for the foundation, they brought a share capital of 365,000 euros into the foundation.

According to the statutes, the purpose of the foundation is to promote nature conservation projects and environmentally sound land use in protected areas in Germany, particularly in the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve. According to Hugo Fiege, the foundation's concern is to bring nature conservation, ecological forest use and business management together as a unit. In the long term, a network of private and public actors is to be created that will ensure the quality of life in the rural natural area Schorfheide-Chorin in the long term.

Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of the Foundation

On the foundation's board are:

  • Elisabeth Fiege (Chair)
  • Anke Jenssen
  • Alfons Schulze Jochmaring, attorney in the tax law and economics firm Grewen
  • Simon Wolff

The Foundation's Board of Trustees includes:

  • Hugo Fiege (Chairman)
  • Stefan Adler, NABU forest consultant
  • Jan Fiege, Managing Director at Fiege-Logistik
  • Hubert Große Kleimann, farmer
  • Gerhard Hofmann, Forest Studies Institute Eberswald
  • Axel Kruschat, BUND country manager

Foundation forest

The foundation received contiguous areas in the Redernswalder Forest and in the Wolletz Schonung with an area of ​​662 hectares. Both forest areas are in the Grumsiner Forest / Redernswalde . The total nature reserve covers 6157.89 hectares and extends to the areas of the cities of Angermünde ( district of Uckermark ) and Joachimsthal as well as the communities of Althüttendorf , Friedrichswalde and Ziethen (the latter district of Barnim ). At the same time as the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve was established, the nature reserve was placed under protection as nature reserve No. 23 on October 1, 1990. A part of the area over 800 hectares is now a total reserve . The nature reserve also belongs to the FFH area Grumsiner Forst - Redernswalde .

In addition, the foundation was given 10 hectares of forest in the Zichower Wald-Weinberg nature reserve on the western slope of the Randow lowland east of Gramzow .

Felling action in the future total reserve

In 2004 there was an unauthorized felling of 572 old Brandenburg oaks in the Grumsiner Forst / Redernswalde nature reserve. All were in an area that as a planned total reserve by the authorities by decree with a development freeze was occupied. The proceeds from the oak trees felled in 2004 of around 60,000 euros went to the foundation. The felling was carried out by the state forest of Brandenburg .

The Brandenburg State Association of the German Nature Conservation Union (NABU) then filed criminal charges against the foundation. According to NABU, this was an illegal act. The Frankfurt (Oder) public prosecutor's office initially investigated “against unknown persons”. The NABU's criminal complaint states that the foundation was "guilty of deliberately endangering areas in need of protection ... in a particularly serious case". Anyone who violates the NSG legal provision or prohibition of forest clearing and thereby significantly affects the protective purpose will be punished with imprisonment of up to five years or a fine. Environment Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) is also critical of the felling action: It is difficult to understand why hundreds of valuable old oaks have to be felled in an area known to be a total reserve.

The entrepreneur Hugo Fiege saw himself "wrongly criminalized". He justified the action with the fact that the affected protected area had not yet been designated as a total reserve as planned and forestry was therefore currently permitted. With the felling of the approximately 150-year-old oaks, they wanted to protect a beech tree. A subsequent report by Gerhard Hofmann, the head of the Forest Studies Institute in Eberswald and member of the board of trustees of the Schorfheide-Chorin Foundation, confirmed that the impact was oriented towards nature conservation.

The felling action had not been registered with the Brandenburg State Environment Agency . The head of department for large protected areas in the Brandenburg State Environment Agency Martin Flade and later head of the biosphere reserve described the deforestation as "unsubstantiated and harmful in terms of nature conservation" in an official statement. In a note on internal use, he wrote that the "only reasonable justification" for the logging could be to generate "a short-term financial gain" for the foundation.

Hugo Fiege then complained to Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck and his lawyers wrote to Environment Minister Dietmar Woidke, urging that the fine proceedings be discontinued. In the summer of 2005, the expert and forest studies institute director Gerhard Hofmann filed a complaint against Flade. Hofmann accused Flade of “a network of false statements, distortions, ... malicious allegations”, “criminalizing the foundation under an official seal”, “turning statements from the ministry into the opposite”, “spreading personal and tendentious prejudices as an authority's point of view” and “regular ones and constant agitation ”.

On August 12, 2005, the case was declared closed. In a joint press release by the state government and the foundation on the “felling of individual oaks” it was stated: A “final examination of the factual and legal situation” had shown that the foundation had not violated any legal provisions. "As a result, criminal and regulatory investigations ... were set." In February 2006, the State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment responded to Hofmann's complaint. The State Secretary wrote: “Your allegations against Dr. Flade essentially apply. "

In November 2006, the PDS MPs Kornelia Wehlan and Carolin Steinmetzer-Mann submitted a small inquiry to the Brandenburg state parliament about “tree felling in the total reserve”. Minister Woidke explained that the nature conservation focus of the felling was confirmed by an expert expert.

After Martin Flade insisted on his assessment of the matter, he was dismissed from his post. Flade sued against it under labor law and won. Flade has been head of the biosphere reserve again since October 15, 2018.

Projects

In 2012, in the forest around Wolletz and Redernswalde, the Foundation carried out a research project in cooperation with the Humboldt University of Berlin to analyze the old tree population, investigate its importance for the ecosystem and draw practical conclusions for forest development. The project was financed from the proceeds of the foundation.

resonance

Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck (SPD) praised the foundation during a visit to Gut Wolletz in January 2007: "This combination of economy and nature conservation is unique in Germany."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.pnn.de/brandenburg-berlin/143422/
  2. ↑ http://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/976327
  3. ↑ http://www.wolletz.angermuende.de/cms/front_content.php?idcat=793
  4. ↑ according to the protected area information in the state of Brandenburg ; according to other sources 6,154.43 hectares
  5. ↑ Ordinance on the establishment of nature reserves and a landscape protection area of ​​central importance with the overall designation Biosphere Reserve Schorfheide-Chorin of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic of September 12, 1990
  6. ↑ http://www.pnn.de/brandenburg-berlin/143422/
  7. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/brandenburgi/auf-dem-holzweg/1130812.html
  8. ↑ Inquiry and response from the state government to the small inquiry on tree felling in the total reserve