Overview
- The three states launched the Naturschutzgroßprojekt Grünes Band Dreiländereck Monday in Mödlareuth, with Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider expected to attend the opening event.
- The project seeks to coordinate habitat protection, regional development and memorial-site care along the former inner-German border that now forms a continuous nature corridor.
- Conservationists say the Grünes Band shelters more than 1,200 rare and endangered species, including the gold spangled fritillary, freshwater pearl mussel, lynx and rare orchids such as the lady's slipper.
- Organizers frame the corridor as a climate corridor that boosts landscape connectivity and natural climate protection and as part of the transnational European Green Belt that runs over 12,500 km.
- The initiative builds on decades of work by the BUND, which began protecting the strip weeks after the 1989 fall of the Wall and placed the project on Germany’s 2024 UNESCO proposal list.