Low-level Moor Drainage - Landscape

The territory of today’s drained fen was intact until the late 19th Century. The grounds of the “Bürgerwiesen” (“people’s fields”) have been divided into parcels of land for the citizens since the Middle Ages. Between 1906 and 1918 they founded what was known as the drainage association under the direction of Franz Bruckenbacher in order to make better use of these areas. Farmers dug drainage ditches by hand, but they kept getting overgrown. In the late 1980‘s the decision was made to dig out the ditches by machine, as many landowners no longer bothered with digging. This was only done once, however, due to great resistance from environmentalists.

Today we know that such draining brings with it major ecological and at the end climatic problems. Drainage with intensive agriculture reduces biodiversity and the moor’s ability to store water. Drained moors can and should be renatured in order to restore their function as an important storehouse for carbon dioxide.