TeichLausitz: Safeguarding biodiversity through sustainably managed pond landscapes in Lusatia
The BMBF-funded research project TeichLausitz contributes to an improved assessment of the Lusatian pond landscapes, aiming at safeguarding their biodiversity and ecosystem services that depends on this unique cultural landscape shaped by traditional pond farming. For this purpose, recommendations for an improved incorporation of the manifold values of biodiversity and ecosystem services in private and public decision-making are developed.
Carp pond farming has a long history and tradition in Lusatia. The ponds were specifically created for fish production and now form an impressive landscape, which not only provides a refuge for biological diversity, but is also considered an attractive destination for leisure activities in the region. Only by continuously cultivating and managing the ponds, this form of landscape can be preserved; otherwise, ponds would silt up and be lost.
However, pond farmers are currently facing several challenges, such as water shortage due to climate change or decreasing economic viability due to changing framework conditions over the last three decades. The project TeichLausitz develops recommendations for improved financial support programs in order to support pond farms in sustainably managing their ponds and thus, preserving their biodiversity and ecosystem services provided, while also improving the pond farms’ economic sustainability. This is how the unique landscape can be safeguarded for society as a whole at comparably low costs. If managed pond farming is increasingly given up, all the valuable habitats and species protected by European nature conservation directives would have to preserved, for example, by publicly financed landscape care.
Research partners of the project TeichLausitz are the Chair of Ecosystem Services at the International Institute (IHI) Zittau, the Institute of Inland Fisheries Research (IfB) in Potsdam and the Institute of Fisheries Ecology at Thünen Institute Bremerhaven. The Chair of Ecosystem Services investigates governance structures and policies at EU and federal levels as well as the environmental policy instruments to support pond farms in the states of Brandenburg and Saxony. Furthermore, we identify and quantify ecosystem services in pond landscapes and assess them via suitable indicators. Together with our project collaborator from practice, the Administration of the Biosphere Reserve Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape, stakeholder workshops are organized with representatives from authorities, politics, pond farms as well as fishing and conservation NGOs, to continuously integrate practitioners’ knowledge into the project and co-design relevant options.
In June 2022, our project kick-off workshop took place in the Biosphere Reserve Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape. The project team and various stakeholders met to analyze and discuss challenges and future problems of pond farming in Lusatia, and identify relevant ecosystem services for pond landscapes in Brandenburg and Saxony. Based on this workshop, we have selected and defined relevant ecosystem services for further project work that will be quantified and assessed.
Moreover, the IfB took samples in various ponds in the fall of 2022 and collected biodiversity data. In October and November 2022, members of the project team attended carp harvesting of selected study ponds. In traditional pond farming, carp harvesting is still heavy manual labor, often requiring several tons of fish to be caught at high speed, sorted, and distributed to transport basins and then transported to holding facilities. Our IHI team member Rosa Hildebrandt accompanied one of these events. She actively supported the physically demanding work and was able to gain some insights into the practical work of carp pond farmers.
On 7 March 2023, our second stakeholder workshop at Haus der Tausend Teiche in the Biosphere Reserve Upper Lusatian Heath and Pond Landscape will take place, focusing on the newly designed financial support programs to support conservation measures in pond farming in Saxony and Brandenburg from 2023 onwards.
Authors: Irene Ring, Linda Rogge, André Tiemann and Rosa Hildebrandt