A sheltered mountain meadow as the perfect place for a selfie or a daring mountain bike route through the middle of the forest – such tips can be found more and more on the internet. For protected animals and plants, however, digital proliferation can be fatal.
Dermbach (dpa/lhe) – The growing number of digital outdoor tips is causing conflicts with conservationists. More and more people are sharing their experiences of hiking, sports and leisure activities in nature via apps and digital maps.
Unfortunately, some outdoor enthusiasts give little thought to whether their routes lead through sensitive protected areas and are perhaps illegal. Environmental organizations such as Nabu Hessen see this with concern.
In the Rhön biosphere reserve in the border triangle of Bavaria, Hesse and Thuringia, digital ranger Lukas Nietsch has been checking virtual tour suggestions for their compatibility with nature conservation regulations for six months and keeps information on the network of paths in the region up to date. The task is huge and hardly manageable for one person cope, says the 29-year-old. He works on the Bavarian side of the Rhön. There he should also keep an eye on Hesse and Thuringia.
Community routes in common apps or social networks such as Instagram make up a large part of his tasks. Nietsch repeatedly finds violations – when mountain bikers recommend forbidden cross-country routes through protected areas or overnight accommodation in campers away from designated pitches are praised. To ensure that such bad examples don’t catch on, Nietsch does everything in his power to ensure that they don’t even get onto the internet. If it does, he also gets in touch with the authors, first of all writes them a friendly letter, publishes his own comments, provides information, clarifies the legal situation, appeals, and asks for understanding.
Even if many users show understanding, his intervention does not always help, says Nietsch. A user recently replied that he would accept prohibition signs, but not if they restricted his personal freedom of movement. One could “exaggerate nature conservation” – a thought that unfortunately comes up again and again. The fundamental problem is that there is no real leverage in the event of violations. Nietsch would like more support from politicians here, so that illegal tour tips can be deleted or at least made commentable. Some providers evade their responsibility here.
A look at the real world on site shows that even the smallest disturbances can have massive consequences for the animal and plant world. Ground-nesting bird species, for example, will not return to breed once disturbed by humans. For hibernating animals, disturbances can even be fatal, because activating bodily functions costs energy and they cannot find enough food in the cold season.
The problem can also arise in winter: “Since the Rhön winter paradise attracts many snow fans who come to snowshoe hikes or cross-country skiing, efficient visitor management is also indispensable in winter,” explains a spokeswoman for the Rhön biosphere reserve.
In order to put a stop to violations from the outset, Nietsch has to intervene at an early stage: since many platforms obtain their data from Open Street Map, a kind of open world map, Nietsch feeds in the boundaries of the protected areas in the Rhön as well as the applicable access rights. The data must be as up-to-date as possible so that there are no unwanted tour suggestions in the first place – a mammoth task given the network of hundreds of paths in the Rhön.
The environmental association Nabu is also aware of the problems with questionable tour tips on the internet and outdoor fans going astray. “The leisure pressure on protected areas is a problem, especially in the metropolitan areas and at popular destinations,” explains Berthold Langenhorst from Nabu Hessen. Although most people adhere to the protection rules and are careful when walking – but from time to time hikers in the High Rhön and Vogelsberg deviate from the paths and walk directly over mountain meadows, which are an important habitat for endangered meadow breeders. There are problems with illegal downhill routes for mountain bikers, for example, around the Feldberg in the Hohe Taunus, and in the Schwanheimer Düne nature reserve near Frankfurt, some visitors disregard signs and prescribed paths.
Langenhorst advises responsible Internet users who find irregular route suggestions to take action themselves and not wait for digital rangers like Nietsch: “You should report this to the respective providers and insist on changes to the hiking, geocache and mountain bike routes.”
