Das Projekt "Wiesenhabitat Elzwiesen Rheinhausen" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Bezirksstelle für Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege Freiburg durchgeführt. First of all, the LIFE co-finance will be used to carry out further improvements to habitats, in particular for the birdlife, and to reduce factors which disturb meadow birds in their breeding. A 2000 m2 retention basin will be built at a quiet spot, which is to serve as drinking, resting and foraging area for breeding and migrating birds. In addition, water inflow into a ditch will be restored and the irrigation installations renovated and upgraded. The project will also fund mowing programmes and the thinning of bushes along the Alten Elz, activities to be continued afterwards with funding from the regional authorities. An action concept and targeted measures to bring the predation problem under control will be developed in close collaboration with the hunting authorities, hunters and ornithologists. Cooperation with other interest groups is a recipe which the beneficiary has already put to the test successfully: for ten years now farmers and conservationists have been working together in the Elz meadows, and through LIFE this is to be continued. Large coherent blocks of meadow have shrunk dramatically in the upper Rhine lowlands over the past decades, so that the meadows flanking the Elz stream near Rheinhausen and Rust are of considerable significance, especially for avifauna. A peculiarity of this landscape are the so-called 'Waesserwiesen', meadows originally irrigated several times a year to obtain higher yields, and now home base for the largest subpopulation in Baden-Wuerttemberg of the vulnerable curlew (Numenius arquata), as well as an important foraging area for migrating waders and birds of prey passing through. The Elz meadows have already received EU co-financing once before: ACE-Biotopes, the forerunner to LIFE-Nature, co-financed the maintenance of the old irrigation system between 1985 und 1990. In spite of the improvement to the habitats achieved through the ACE-project the curlew population did not grow to the extent hoped for, not in the least because of increased predation by foxes, crows and magpies, which reduces the rate of successful breeding.
Das Projekt "Waesserwiesen und Wiesenbewaesserung" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Hohenheim, Institut für Landschafts- und Pflanzenökologie durchgeführt. Die Ueberreste ehemaliger Wiesenbewaesserungsanlagen sollen untersucht werden, und zwar unter Kultur-, Wasserbau-, agrarhistorischen und oekologischen Gesichtspunkten. Eine Beurteilung der Flaechen erfolgt unter naturschuetzerischen und denkmalschuetzerischen Aspekten.