German Green Belt
The project began in 1989 facing the 870-mile (1,400 km) network of inner-German border fences and guard towers formerly separating East and West Germany.
The overall "Green Belt" is characterized by an exceptional wealth of species and habitats, most of which are now endangered, representing a system of interlinked biotopes of national importance, which joins or passes through valuable swathes of land and intensively farmed agricultural landscapes.
On the eastern side, it was made one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers, defined by a continuous line of high metal fences and walls, barbed wire, alarms, anti-vehicle ditches, watchtowers, automatic booby traps and minefields.
In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
[4] The "West" saw the creation of the GDR as an extension of the Soviet Union and an illegitimate heir to German history and culture following World War II.
13 years later, during the inauguration by Mikhail Gorbachev of the LandArt project "West-Eastern Gate" in the Eichsfeld, the vision of the European Green Belt was established.
[1] In order to prove the value of the land, the BUND and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) worked in collaboration and began a painstaking inventory of the ecosystems and species along the Green Belt.
[1] This included teams of ornithologists, botanists, and entomologists walking hundreds of kilometers recording what they saw and collecting data from locals in each area.
The Federal Agency for Nature Conservation called for the creation of large formal reserves in as many areas as possible along the Green Belt, which would form the spine of a new German-wide system of ecological corridors.
Gorbachev became the first person to buy a "Green Belt share" which had opened the doors for people to give money to BUND (Friends of the Earth) to purchase land.
Further on, environmentalists have been working to extend the Green Belt beyond the German borders to reflect the larger "Iron Curtain" of the former Soviet states.
The results of the "longest" inventory ever undertaken by the German nature conservationists underline the outstanding ecological value of the 1,393 km-long and 177 km2 large network of habitats.
Together with actual data on conservation areas, status and management the following characteristics picture the Green Belt: The diversity of the landscape is an important refuge and home to many plant and animal species: rare orchids like the lady's slipper, the clubtail dragonfly, the marsh fritillary, the whinchat, the red-backed shrike, the black stork, the kingfisher and the otter.
Since November 2018 the complete Thuringian part of the Green Belt Germany is under protection as "Nationales Naturmonument" (National Nature Monument).
This unique combination of nature, culture and history is the basis of the "Experience Green Belt" project, a collaboration with individual states, the BUND and BfN.
[18] As an ambitious conservation project, there are still a number of tasks; one of the largest is creating more formally designated protected areas and closing the 12% of gaps in the Green Belt.
[20] This has hampered the development of SuedLink [de], a high-voltage cable intended to transport renewable electricity across German states from the north to the south.
[21] The environmental speaker of the German Farmers' Association argued in 2013 that the Green Belt risked becoming a 'Green Border' if additional nature reserves along it impeded farming.
