News:
Project of the Month

Our second land purchase for endangered meadow birds in Eiderstedt!

Thanks to your regular and generous support, we were able to make our first important land purchase on the Eiderstedt peninsula in December... a milestone for highly endangered meadow birds and the last Black Terns still found there. Purchase price, ancillary costs, land registry entry: everything has been taken care of. A gift of habitat that could hardly be more valuable for the ‘long-billed’ birds.

This success has encouraged us to continue. Because in Eiderstedt, between the North Sea coast and the North Frisian Islands, the grassland property market is changing rapidly: the properties of large landowners are changing hands, prices are high, and bidding wars are fierce. Investors and industrial agricultural enterprises have the money to secure grassland not only for milk and meat production, but increasingly also for the siting of energy facilities.

At the same time, environmental impact assessments and other important protective regulations were comprehensively repealed in 2025 under the current federal government. The result: space-consuming wind and solar infrastructure is rapidly covering the landscape – valuable meadow bird breeding and feeding habitats are shrinking, and with them, meadow birds, Black Terns and familiar images of the countryside are disappearing.

A long-time resident of Eiderstedt recently summed up this dire situation as follows:
"The green peninsula of Eiderstedt is in danger of losing its identity – and the meadow birds are facing extinction."

This is exactly what we are working on with you: ensuring this does not happen.

While many of our ‘long-billed’ birds – Oystercatchers, Curlews, Lapwings, Redshanks, Greenshanks, Snipe and others – recently spent the winter in our 462-hectare Pantani migratory bird sanctuary in Sicily, well-guarded by our Bird Guards, we are now witnessing their return to the grasslands of North Frisia.

After our initial purchase of 8.9 hectares in the winter of 2025, we were able to secure a directly adjacent 3.8-hectare area of wet meadows by means of a purchase agreement: a total of 12.7 hectares (127,000 m²) of meadowland is now protected by us – a new bird paradise in the making. But the second land purchase comes at a price: 178,000 euros, including ancillary costs.

90,000 euros will come from our hard-earned project reserve.

We still need 88,000 euros – and for that we need your help.

Please support us with 20, 30 or 60 euros, or any other amount you can afford. Every donation brings us closer to meeting the total purchase price by the contractually agreed deadline of 30 April.

Together, we can provide Curlews, Lapwings and other ‘long-beaked species’ on the North Sea coast with a permanent, foundation-owned wetland home, which we will further enhance ecologically this autumn.