“NaturCulture for Liveable Ridge Landscapes” is the key idea behind the project. We are losing our biological diversity, as is clearly shown by the constantly growing lists of threatened and endangered plants and animals whose habitats are being disrupted by human interference. For this reason, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) published the National Strategy on Biological Diversity in 2007.

By implementing the proposed measures, Germany aims to fulfil its part in achieving the goals of the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In order to achieve the aims and visions laid out in the National Strategy, the Saxon Ministry for the Environment and Agriculture (SMUL) developed an action plan with practical measures to protect and promote species diversity in the Free State of Saxony in 2010.

Public outreach and environmental education that promotes and protects biological diversity form a key part of this action plan. Designing biotopes, conserving landscapes and protecting species are measures adopted by the nature park’s governing body and other conservation bodies that form the focus of this project. These include the care and maintenance of hedgerows and species-rich, extensively used grasslands, revitalising moors and watercourses, and creating and restoring regional environmental cycles, as well as utilising the ma-terials produced in the course of landscape conservation or harvesting fruit from extensively cultivated land – for example from orchard meadows.