NATURE CONSERVATION ON THE EDGE OF THE BIG CITY

Landscape conservation in great surroundings and sightseeing in the big city You can experience both in this camp on the outskirts of Hamburg. During the entire first week and on the first day of the second week, you will work under the guidance of staff from the Elbe-Tidal Flootplain Centre in the nature reserves Heuckenlock, Schweenssand, Auenlandschaft Obere Tideelbe and Rodenbeker Quellental. The Heuckenlock Nature Reserve is a tidal floodplain forest and freshwater mudflats covering approximately 100 hectares in the south of the Hamburg Elbe island of Wilhelmsburg. The area extends over a length of 3 kilometres along the north bank of the SEderelbe and is flooded about a hundred times a year. Due to its special location between river and land, the Heuckenlock nature reserve, with its unique freshwater floodplains in Europe, is an important refuge for many plant and animal species that have long since been displaced elsewhere by cultivation of the landscape. It is one of the most species-rich nature reserves in the Hamburg area. In Heuckenlock and the other three nature reserves you will remove non-native plants, mainly Japanese knotweed. This will be done with both hands and spades. In addition, you will relocate bank revetments in the nature reserve Auenlandschaft Obere Tideelbe, cut hedges in the garden of the Elbe-Tideau Centre and build and hang up nesting boxes.During the last four days of the second week, you will work in a different area every day. You will be guided by the staff of BUND (Bund fEr Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland - Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany) Hamburg. You will work on biotope maintenance on the Georgswerder energy mountain, a former landfill site, maintain compensation areas of the Altenwerder compensation foundation, do various gardening tasks on the grounds of your accommodation, the BUND nature experience garden, and go caning through the numerous canals of Wilhelmsburg and clean them of rubbish as part of the BUND project can4nature.In addition to the practical work, you will learn a lot about nature conservation and environmental protection in general as well as about the natural habitat of the freshwater tidal floodplain and its protection in particular from the staff of the Elbe Tidal Floodplain Centre and the BUND Nature Experience Garden. You will learn a lot about the local flora and fauna, the renaturation of areas, tides and their effects as well as dikes and flood protection.Information (unfortunately only in German) on the Heuckenlock nature reserve, the Elbe tidal floodplain centre and the BUND nature discovery garden can be found here: https://www.gp.hamburg/heuckenlock/https://www.gp.hamburg/umweltbildung/elbe-tideauenzentrum.phphttps://www.bund-hamburg.de/themen/umweltbildung/naturerlebnisgarten/