Once just a peninsula, now as an island part of the largest nature reserve in Hesse: the Kühkopfinsel is home to rare species. With miles of cycling and hiking trails, it is also a local recreation area.
Stockstadt (dpa/lhe) – On some days, thousands of walkers, cyclists and nature lovers romp around on the Rhine on the outskirts of Stockstadt. In Hessen’s largest nature reserve Kühkopf-Knoblochsaue there are natural forests, wide meadows, badgers, foxes, wild boars, insects, frogs, fish and lots of bird species.
At 16 out of a total of 24 square kilometers, most of it is a man-made island, sandwiched between the Rhine and its oxbow lake. An island? Not always and at some point maybe not at all.
“It’s not an island at the moment,” says Ralph Baumgärtel, head of the environmental education center on the Schatzinsel Kühkopf on the Guntershausen estate, while two young storks hop around on the gable and do flight exercises. This used to be a rare event, but now it happens almost every year that the Rhine’s backwater is dry. At some point, the old arm, which was once 400 meters wide before the river was straightened near Stockstadt, could also silt up completely. “We currently have extremely low water.” But the Rhine can also be different. “With us, the river fluctuates by seven meters.”
When the tide is really high, the island is flooded. In 2013, the courtyard of the farm was also under water, including the fish, says Baumgärtel. It’s just a meadow landscape. “The flood is massive.” But it is also the engine. With every flood, the animal population regulates itself. “Mice always have bad cards.” The same goes for hedgehogs and deer. Wild boars, on the other hand, are good swimmers and foxes save themselves in treetops. Water is also important for vegetation. The beech, which otherwise dominates in Germany, does not exist here because it cannot tolerate so much water.
There are a total of 60 kilometers of hiking and cycling trails in the nature reserve. “Up to 10,000 visitors come on peak days,” says Baumgärtel. In the approximately 1300 hectares of forest, nature is only intervened along these paths and visitors should only use the paths. “We stay out of here,” says Baumgärtel about the forest away from the hiking trails. “During the corona pandemic, this was really busy here.” However, there were also massive garbage problems. “There are also chaos.” But overall it works quite well. The approximately 600 hectares of meadows would also be used for agriculture, but in accordance with nature conservation regulations. There are 30 different apple varieties in the nature reserve.
There has also been a lot of development in education over the past few years. There are four nature trails on which you can get information about meadows, trees or fruit via QR code and app. In the environmental education center in the former cowshed of the estate there is an exhibition with objects to touch, try out and the history of the island, which also addresses the unique variety of plants and animals of the floodplain. The teaching institute, which is run by a support association, offers projects for school classes and daycare groups. “It’s about raising awareness for the area,” says Baumgärtel. There is currently no gastronomy.
Those responsible are also concerned with climate change. According to Baumgärtel, the forest is slowly disappearing. “We don’t know how the forests will develop.” And the prevailing ash trees there have another problem. They are infested with a fungus that may have entered the country via a timber import. “He’s snatching up the ash trees here,” says Baumgärtel.
Until the river was straightened in 1828, the Kühkopfinsel was a head-shaped peninsula on the left bank of the Rhine. The straightening served shipping, but was also intended to lower the groundwater level in the surrounding Hessian Ried and thus make areas usable for agriculture. The paradox: Today, the Ried supplies the densely populated Rhine-Main area with water and water has to be diverted from the Rhine in order to maintain the groundwater level there. The name comes from the shape of the head, but has nothing to do with a cow. The area used to be a protected forest and thus land of kings. Linguistically, Kühkopf developed from the Königskopf.
As early as 1952, according to the Darmstadt Regional Council, the area was designated as a nature reserve. It also has the title of European reserve and is part of the European network of protected areas “Natura 2000”. At the beginning of the 1980s, intensive farming and maintenance of the dyke systems were abandoned. Forestry came to an end here in 2005.
