PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Coiling its many meanders along the border between Burgenland and Styria, the Lafnitz is a true lowland river where erosion and sedimentation still shape and re-shape parts of its middle and lower stretches. Structures like sandbanks, islets, deep whirlpools, shallow fords and oxbow lakes, and vegetation like bankside gallery woods and bushes, alder-ash floodplain forest, dead timber, humid meadows and nutrient-poor lowland hay meadows, mark these areas. Otters, fire-bellied toads and pond terrapins are characteristic denizens. Yet here too the late 20th century saw floodplain forest converted to arable land, humid meadows drained or afforested and the land's morphology modified. Sand and gravel extraction and infrastructure projects loomed over the natural environment.
OBJECTIVES
LIFE funds would be used to buy sections, both in areas which need to be protected in their own right as in other areas. These latter would be swapped for unpurchased sections in the 'riverside wilderness protection zone', so that a coherent strip along the Lafnitz is secured. Not only conservation would benefit. The river catchment authorities, important partners in the project, wanted to secure strips along the river banks so that they could furthet implement their concept of passive protection against floods. In a convenient marriage between the two disciplines, the land acquired would be given to succession or managed, depending on the case, to preserve or re-establish river sections where fluviatile dynamics operate unfettered, as well as floodplain forests and species-rich meadows. All of these would simultaneously be retention areas for floodwaters. Furthermore, besides LIFE other funds would contribute to sustainable land use here: EAGGF-Guidance, 2078/92 and (to support grazing development and 'soft' tourism) LEADER.
RESULTS
The project ended successfully and its positive aspects were the strong local support, synergy with two LEADER projects (a farmer-led experiment to develop sustainable recurring grasslands management and a project on tourism promotion), model collaboration between water and nature authorities and use of a rural land consolidation procedure for conservation purposes, The LIFE-Nature project was a step forward in securing the Lafnitz valley as an area where the aims of nature conservation, flood protection, sustainable agriculture and heritage-based tourism are combined. The overall aim was to have a section of river 50 km long, in a natural state and flanked by a corridor of floodplain forest and alluvial grasslands. The project concentrated on 6 subsites along the river Lafnitz from Loipersdorf to Fürstenfeldbruck. The Lafnitz river was not canalised and regulated, but as a free-flowing river it kept meandering, eroding land away and rendering areas unproductive for farming. Consequently, calls by landowners and farmers to take action against this on-going loss of land, increased. In the late 1980s the idea of ‘passive flood protection’ came to the fore within the water authorities and Lafnitz became a pilot project. Instead of canalising the river, flood retention areas would be designated in areas which are already more or less natural (floodplain forests) or used extensively (hay meadows). By creating such a corridor of land along the river in public ownership, private landowners and farmers would be shifted away from the river through purchase or compensation so that complaints would stop. At the same time, this corridor would allow the Lafnitz to continue to flow free and riverside habitats to develop naturally, it would be ideal for passive flood protection, and, by moving intensive farmland away from the waterside, reduce water pollution from seepage and run-off. The trend to convert grassland to maize field was increasing polluting run-off of fertiliser and phytopharmaceuticals and washing soil into the river. Before the LIFE project began, 155 ha had been purchased along the section of river constituting the project area, as ‘Öffentliches Wassergut’ i.e. property of the Republic of Austria’s water authorities. The LIFE project added another 52.3 ha, i.e. increasing it by 1/3. Of this, 25 ha was earmarked for floodplain forest and left to natural succession. This land simultaneously contributes to the aim of passive flood protection. In the passive flood protection scheme there is a buffer zone between the ‘wilderness zone’ (i.e. the central corridor where land has been left to natural dynamics - floodplain forests, erosion of the banks at one place and sedimentation at another) and the farmland. It is 10-50 metres broad and ideally ought to be, or become, extensively used grassland. Here the problem arises, who will manage the grassland? The land in the Lafnitz valley is intensively used for crops and livestock is traditionally kept in stables. Grass was mown from hay meadows and brought to the stables, but the trend is towards maize, so that grasslands along the river were disappearing. Prior to LIFE one-off compensations had been paid in return for keeping meadows intact for 25 years or contractors had been hired to mow former hayfields and compost the grass. However, these solutions were expensive and did not always give a good result in terms of grassland biodiversity. Of the 52.3 ha bought during the LIFE project, 27.3 ha was to become buffer zone alluvial grassland. This target was achieved largely thanks to a LEADER project, with the same beneficiary, which ran in parallel to the LIFE project. Purpose of this project, by the local farmer-based NGO Weideverein Ramsargebiet, was to show that Natura 2000 does not only bring restrictions on farming, but can also open up new possibilities. In the Lafnitz, ploughing up Annex I meadows in the pSCI to plant maize would breach Article 6, i.e. a restriction, but preservation of the grasslands (the Natura 2000 objective) can be done through cattle grazing, a new activity in the Lafnitz compared to keeping animals in stables and bringing hay to them. LEADER provided the investment funds for fences, equipment etc and the Weideverein began its experiment on land already within the passive flood protection corridor at Loipersdorf in 1998. One obstacle it had to face – lack of suitable land – was removed during the project thanks to the LIFE purchases and the accompanying rural land consolidation scheme. By 2001 it had 100 cows grazing 50 ha, with another 80 ha as hay meadow for winter fodder. The viability of the system is assured by agri-environmental funding as well as through CAP suckler cow premia. Within the highly intensified agricultural context of the Lafnitz valley and the trend to transform meadows into arable land, the Weideverein was creating an agricultural need for grazing pasture and late-mown hay meadows, thus contributing to the conservation/restoration of these habitats and removing a financial burden for recurring management from the conservation and water authorities. Rural land consolidation was used as instrument in the LIFE project. In the Lafnitz, land ownership is very fragmented and prevents farmers from working rationally. Rural land consolidation was an ideal instrument to create coherent blocks. Instead of a mix of small maize fields and small meadows, consolidation allowed all maize fields to be merged into a distinct block and all grasslands into another. It also helped the experiment with suckler cow grazing by providing the larger coherent grassland areas needed to make this viable. Also, larger meadows make hay mowing by tractor easier. 2-3% of the total budget of the rural land consolidation procedure was used to create a biotope network out of isolated sections of nature. The LIFE project also carried out a vegetation inventory and a management plan for one subsite. On some of the land purchased, non-native trees were cut and re-planted with deciduous trees to stimulate floodplain forest development, 200 trees were planted along boundaries as well as 500 shrubs, and 10 ha of arable land was converted to meadow. The measures undertaken under this LIFE project should have a beneficial effect on floodplain habitats and the associated bird species (Ciconia nigra, Ciconia ciconia, Alcedo atthis, Ficedula albicollis, Dryocopus martius, Picus canus)and other animal species such as the otter Lutra lutra and the two Maculinea butterfly species. The project organised guided excursions and village events and produced an information brochure and a video film aimed at the wider audience and providing a good overview over the project area. An encyclopaedic book, 'Das Lafnitztal. Flußlandschaft im Herzen Europas', about the LIFE project area is scheduled to be published in 2005 by the Umweltbundesamt. There was networking with similar projects in Germany, Austria and Hungary and participation in the LIFE Week and Green Week. LIFE also backed up a LEADER project to build up a visitor guidance system/information centre, by financing equipment for this centre and part of the information boards along touristic routes. Another incentive effect has been that since March 1 2002 the middle section of the Lafnitz valley is included on the list of internationally important wetlands. It is thanks to the initiative taken by the LIFE beneficiary Weideverein Ramsargebiet Lafnitztal that this entire middle section, 50 km long with a total area of 2,000 ha, has been declared Ramsar site after the end of the LIFE project. The Ramsar site Lafnitztal includes all subsites of the LIFE project; the territories of 19 municipalities extend into it.