Natürlich Hamburg! – Large-scale nature conservation project in a major city

In the garden of the Trinkhalle in Hamburg’s city park, the festive kick-off of the second project phase of the large-scale nature conservation project Natürlich Hamburg! took place on Friday, May 5. Anke Butscher moderated the kick-off and the handover of the funding decision with Federal Minister for the Environment Steffi Lemke, the President of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation Sabine Riewenherm and Senator Jens Kerstan, Department for Environment, Climate, Energy and Agriculture of the City of Hamburg.

With the implementation of the first large-scale nature conservation project in a major city, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg wants to show how public green spaces can be designed in such a way that ecological requirements and the demands of recreational use and garden monument preservation can be reconciled.

Hamburg represents one of the largest German urban agglomerations, which is structured by a differentiated Green Network consisting of landscape axes, the two Green Rings with green spaces and parks as well as nature reserves and the Hamburg Biotope Network. This Green Network covers a total of more than 40,000 hectares, or over half of the city’s territory. It provides habitats for numerous plant and animal species and contributes to the quality of life of the population.

Over the next 10 years, Naturally Hamburg! aims to permanently safeguard the parts of nature and landscape worthy of protection in this urban cityscape and develop them into a diverse urban green infrastructure. The funding area covers a total of 37 so-called urban nature areas along four magistrals, including 14 nature reserves, 19 parks and green corridors. In these, the opportunity is taken to enhance the existing natural capital in the form of diverse parks and green spaces, nature reserves, biotope network areas and also along selected transport axes, and to communicate the associated values to the population. The main objective of the project is to strengthen the function of parks and green spaces as habitats for animals and plants, taking into account the experience of nature and recreation, as well as to increase other ecosystem services of nature reserves by improving biodiversity. The nature conservation goals for the overall project include the protection and development of biodiversity in the entire funding area, the strengthening of both the inner-city and the transnational biotope network on the outskirts of the city in the transition to the states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. Furthermore, nature reserves are to be strengthened and upgraded, and the near-natural development and ecological management of parks and green spaces is to be achieved for all parks and green spaces with locally adapted maintenance practices.

Anke Butscher and Ulrike Eberle, the managing partners of corsus, already accompanied and moderated the three-year planning phase of Natürlich Hamburg! This included the finding, participation and concretization phase.

The App „Natürlich HH!“ presents areas and their biodiversity and explains tours.