Schönbuch

In the south, west, and east, the borders of the Nature Park and Schönbuch-Region are roughly the same; however, the region’s boundaries also include the cities and communities which lie on its edges.

[1] The western boundary is generally accepted to lie within the Gäu flats, beginning east of the Filder Plateau.

[1] The features making up the northern edge of the region are the Siebenmühlental (Seven-Mill Valley), a clearing in the forest referred to as the “Schönbuchlichtung,” along with the surrounding woodlands.

[1] In the Schönbuchlichtung lie the villages of (from west clockwise) Hildrizhausen, Altdorf, Holzgerlingen, Schönaich, Steinenbronn, and Waldenbuch, with Weil im Schönbuch and Dettenhausen sitting in the southern portion of the clearing.

It is also close to Reutlingen (south-east), the university city of Tübingen (south), Herrenberg (southwest), and Böblingen (northwest).

A commuter train called the Schönbuchbahn runs through the Schönbuch, connecting Dettenhausen to Böblingen where it links to the S-Bahn system.

Beyond the villages of the Schönbuchlichtung clearing, other nearby settlements include (in clockwise order) Aichtal, Schlaitdorf, Walddorfhäslach, Pliezhausen, Kirchentellinsfurt, Tübingen, Ammerbuch, Herrenberg, Nufringen, und Gärtringen.

7420-341 totaling 11,249 hectares or ~27,797 acres), as well as Special Protection Areas, or SPAs (the EU’s bird reserve program) (No.

In the eastern part of Schönbuch are three Celtic rectangular ditched enclosures that can be traced back to the European Iron Age.

After the Romans withdrew, the Alemannic immigrants initially avoided Schönbuch so the forest could recover from its damaged areas.

[8] Chapel of the hermitage with an altar on the Bromberg Hill In the Early Middle Ages, there were many imperially controlled forests.

The remains of the small residential building were restored in 2004 after a contract between the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the state monuments office of Baden-Württemberg.

Hunting was reserved only for the rulers of the House of Württemberg, whereas logging and pasture use were carried out by the so-called Schönbuch comrades (Schönbuchgenossen).

This involved around 70 townships and cities in the Schönbuch area, which exchanged money, grain, and chicken in return for the use of the land.

[1][9] The storms “Vivian” and “Wiebke” in the spring of 1990 caused Schönbuch considerable damage, exacerbated by a subsequent bark beetle plague in the hot and dry years that followed.

“Wiebke” toppled over most of the trees together with their roots, whereas “Lothar” simply broke off a good twenty percent, which was also detrimental to the utilization of the wood.

In the entire Schönbuch, the amount of damage was equivalent to approximately one million cubic meters of timber.

On the one hand, the reason for the far less dramatic consequences was that “Kyrill” did not develop its full impact in the Schönbuch area.

[10] Today, the damage is also seen as an opportunity to change the composition of the forest to increase the proportion of deciduous tree species.

Among other things, one can find Pipe Grass, Red Foxglove, Broombrush, Bracken, Sundew, Narrow-leaved and Broad-leaved Cottongrass, Heather and Carnations, Lycopodium, Bilberries, various Peat Mosses, and, of course, the Birch Trees that give the area its name.

To protect the vegetation from trampling by visitors, a boulder dam and other paths made of bark mulch were laid in 1988.

[14][16] The typical form of fruit production in the past was orchards, which are in many places on the edge of the nature park, especially around the western Schönbuch slope.

The extensively used meadows have shaped the landscape on the edge of Schönbuch for over 100 years, and today they are of particular importance from an ecological perspective.

Here, there are fire salamanders, yellow-bellied toads, black woodpeckers, and stag beetles, which are animals that have fallen victim to the human-use of land outside of the park.

The introduction of mammals in the region began with bears in 1600, followed by wolves, lynx, and finally wild cats in 1916.

[11] The most common species in the nature park include: the red deer, wild boar, roe deer, badger, red fox, European hare, pine and stone marten, polecat, squirrel, hedgehog, stoat, weasel, mole, dormouse, muskrat, various shrews, and other mouse species.

[20][9] Increasing hunting pressure and tourism heavily frightened the animals in Schönbuch that they were rarely found in grazing areas and instead peeled off tree bark in the woods.

[17] Given that the Landesforstverwaltung (“Land Forest Administration”) declared its intent to conserve the red deer in Schönbuch for cultural consideration, five wildlife privacy zones have been added inside the game reserve.

For example, you can stop off at the “castle Hohenentringen,” the “Weiler hut,” the “nature friend house Herrenberg,” and various restaurants in Bebenhausen.

For example, the association initiated the uniform signage installed in 1998 and the information center in the writing tower of the Bebenhausen monastery.