Ulrich Eichelmann

Ulrich Eichelmann (* 1961 in Atteln ) is a German conservationist , filmmaker and environmental activist.

Life

Eichelmann studied landscape ecology and has lived in Vienna since 1989 . He started working for WWF Austria in 1991 and remained an expert in the protection and improvement of running waters until 2007. Until 1996 he was responsible at WWF for preventing further Danube hydropower plants and the establishment of the Donau-Auen National Park east of Vienna. He coordinated the Save the Danube floodplains campaign and The countdown is on , with which the WWF set the opening date of the national park and ushered in the last 600 days until then. He then headed the Living Rivers campaign , in which the WWF, together with the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture, defined the 74 best river stretches in Austria (with a total length of 1,300 kilometers) as “untouchables”. Numerous renaturations were also started at that time. In 2007 he started his own business and coordinated Stop Ilisu , the campaign against the construction of the Ilisu dam on the Tigris in Turkey and against the participation of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the project. As a result, in June 2009 the three states, as well as the European banks and most of the European construction companies, withdrew from the project. In 2012 he founded the organization RiverWatch , a nature conservation organization for the protection of rivers, which acts worldwide primarily against the construction of dams. Since the end of 2013 he has been coordinating the “Save the Blue Heart of Europe” campaign, a joint initiative to protect the rivers in the Balkans.

Awards

On November 14, 2014 Ulrich Eichelmann was awarded the Great Binding Prize for Nature and Environmental Protection in Vaduz / Liechtenstein . On June 24, 2015, he was awarded the Wolfgang Staab Nature Conservation Prize for his special services in river and floodplain protection. The prize was awarded for the first time by the Schweisfurth Foundation in collaboration with the Wolfgang Staab Nature Conservation Fund.

Movies

German biogas plant near Ahlhorn (Lower Saxony)

In 2012 he released the film Climate Crimes in selected cinemas. For more than two years, Eichelmann and his team followed the trail of climate protection projects and “green energies”. He visited the Mesopotamian swamps in Iraq, the primeval forests of Amazonia and Indonesia, the south-east of Turkey and protected areas in Germany. The film shows the tightrope walk between climate protection and the destruction of nature. It shows how the rapid expansion of hydropower, biogas and diesel is destroying natural landscapes, destroying species and driving people away. In the film, the post-growth economist Niko Paech has his say. He was also involved in discussions with the audience at various premiere screenings. This project was funded by the Manfred Hermsen Foundation (Bremen).

Reviews (selection)

In tv.orf it is said that the film deals with “a topic that occupies the conservationist Ulrich Eichelmann and the filmmaker Christoph Walder intensely. 'Climate Crimes' is the name of their documentary in which they expose environmental sins in the name of climate protection. "
Jens Blankennagel writes in the Berliner Zeitung on January 22, 2013, among other things: “He (Eichelmann) denounces the fact that far too much maize is grown to feed the many biogas plants in the country. This monoculture is destroying biodiversity and the landscape. "