Land acquisition project: Paderborner Land
North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW)

Where Little Owl and Tree Sparrow meet

Landscape type (Biotope)

Meadow orchards are old agricultural land and are now among the most endangered parts of the landscape in NRW. Orchards used to surround the villages and individual farmsteads in the transition to the open countryside. The light-flooded and only extensively used orchard meadows offered an ideal habitat not only for the Little Owl but also for hundreds of animal and plant species.

Threat factors

Nowadays, the new development areas sprouting on the outskirts of villages, the increasing aging of the fruit trees and the lack of care for the orchard meadows are destroying these unique habitats. This is accompanied by a dramatic loss of habitat for the Little Owls and biodiversity in general - including old fruit varieties that have now become rare.

The reasons for and aims of conservation

For the benefit of the extraordinarily wide biodiversity of these former cultural landscape structures, it is worth fighting for every remaining square metre of old orchard meadows. Purchase and subsequent extensive use are often the last resort.

Our project commitment

To prevent the final destruction of this last remnant of a formerly extensive meadow orchard, and at the same time to make use of the pending land reorganisation for an ecologically necessary area expansion, we decided to purchase three plots of land.

This resulted in the acquisition of an area of just under 1.0 ha of an existing fragmentary orchard stand of old fruit trees, which we supplemented by the planting of 30 standard fruit trees of old varieties and 600 native berry-bearing wild bushes in a field hedge structure as habitat for the Little Owl, Tree Sparrow and the like.

The meadow areas are leased to a part-time farmer for extensive use as a hay meadow mown twice a year. A qualified horticultural company takes care of the pollarding and fruit tree pruning and replacement plantings. The latter is necessary every year to compensate for dying old fruit trees due to increased periods of drought.

Dominant species (Fauna/Flora)

Little Owl, Tree Sparrow, Grey Partridge.

Your donation helps us to purchase further ecologically-valuable plots of land.