Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park (German: Nationalpark Niedersächsisches Wattenmeer) was created in 1986. It includes the East Frisian Islands, mudflats, and salt marshes located between the Bay of Dollart on the border with the Netherlands in the west and Cuxhaven in the east, extending to the Outer Elbe shipping channel. The park covers an area of about 345,800 hectares (1,335 square miles). The National Park organization is based in Wilhelmshaven. In June 2009, the park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea and the Dutch Wadden Sea. This recognition highlights the park's unique intertidal ecosystem and its high level of biodiversity.

Ecology

The park protects several habitats, including mudflats, salt marshes, beaches, dunes, and estuaries along the North Sea. Special care is given to the wildlife and plants that live in the Wadden Sea, which is part of this protected area.

The North Sea coast is very flat. The seabed drops just a few centimeters over each kilometer. Twice a day, the tide brings sand, clay, and silt into the Wadden Sea. Dunes, made by wind from fine sand on exposed mudflats, are a common feature along the coast.

The Wadden Sea is the second most productive ecosystem in the world, after tropical rainforests. Only tropical rainforests have more living material than the Wadden Sea. Many life forms live here, including diatoms, snails, worms, mussels, and shrimp. A common creature in the sandy mudflats is the lugworm, which lives in a U-shaped tunnel under the mud.

More than 10,000 animal and plant species live in the park. About 4,000 of them depend on the rich food supply of the Wadden Sea. For example, shelducks eat snails, which are found in large numbers on the mudflats. Around 180,000 shelducks from northwestern Europe spend their moulting season from July to September in the Wadden Sea. About 200,000 eiders also spend this time there, and around 1,000 pairs of eiders use the North Sea mudflats to breed, mostly on the island of Amrum.

At the same time, the Wadden Sea is a place where birds from northern regions stop to feed and gain energy for breeding. About 10 to 12 million waders, geese, ducks, and gulls gather in the entire Wadden Sea area.

Seals can be seen on the sandbanks of the Wadden Sea, as well as on nearby salt marshes, beaches, and dunes. Salt marshes are a home for the pied avocet and terns, and they also support plants like sea holly and sea lavender, which bloom in summer. The typical plant of the dunes is beachgrass, which holds the dunes in place with its strong root system.

History of the national park

Since 1971, when the Ramsar Convention was created, the areas now known as the national park and Dollart Bay have been protected as "wetlands of international importance."

In 1979, Hans-Joachim Augst and Holger Wesemüller shared a report that created a zoning model to protect different parts of the Wadden Sea based on their importance. In 1982, the Lower Saxon regional development plan set up a goal to create a national park for the "East Frisian Islands and coast." This idea led to plans for a full national park in 1983. In early 1984, the government approved the park in principle. On January 1, 1986, the national park regulation officially started.

In 1992, the UNESCO "man and biosphere" program recognized the entire national park as a biosphere reserve (Lower Saxony Wadden Sea Biosphere Reserve). All areas of the national park are protected as bird reserves under the EU’s Birds Directive. Zones I and II are also protected as Special Areas of Conservation under the Habitats Directive, which means they follow Natura 2000 rules.

At first, the park was protected by a 1986 regulation. This was replaced in 1999 by a law. However, on July 11, 2001, the Lower Saxon State Parliament changed the law, removing or reducing protections in many areas to support tourism. To balance this, new areas near the islands of Borkum and Baltrum and the former nature reserve in the Dollart were added to the park. This increased the protected area from 240,000 hectares to nearly 280,000 hectares.

In January 2002, the East Frisian conservation group Wattenrat Ost-Friesland told the EU Commission in Brussels that over 80 areas had been removed or downgraded to support tourism, mostly on East Frisian islands. The Commission added this complaint to legal actions against Germany (Complaint No. 2002/4099, Ref: ENV A2/MD/avdm D (2005) 6096). In October 2006, the EU Commission closed the case, saying Germany had identified enough areas for Special Areas of Conservation. The conservation group argued that this did not help nature conservation, as the park was already a protected area and bird reserve. They claimed the EU supported changes that harmed plant habitats and bird breeding or migration sites for tourism.

In July 2006, Lower Saxony celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Wadden Sea National Park at Neßmersiel. Nature conservation groups, supported by the WWF, shared a "national park balance" report that described the park’s many competing uses.

The Wadden Sea National Park is listed by the IUCN as a "Category II, National Parks."

In 2008, the Wadden Sea in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein was proposed to UNESCO for a World Heritage Site. Walter Hirche (FDP), who was the Economic Minister in Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2009, has been the President of the German UNESCO Commission since 2003.

Before the UNESCO nomination, an IUCN official visited the Wadden Sea in 2008 with tourism representatives. News reports later said the UNESCO nomination was a "marketing tool for tourism" and not linked to new conservation rules. On June 26, 2009, the Wadden Sea National Park was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Seville, along with the Dutch and Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Parks. Hamburg and Denmark have not allowed their mudflats to be nominated.

Zoning

The national park is divided into three zones with different levels of protection.

• Zone I: This is the most protected area, covering about 68.5% of the park. People can only enter specific areas, such as along paths or during guided mudflat walks, at any time of year.
• Zone II: This zone covers 31.0% of the park. Visitors may enter at any time of year on specific paths, except in bird reserves. In bird reserves, entry is only allowed on marked trails from April 1 to July 31, during the times when birds are breeding, feeding, or resting.
• Zone III: This is the smallest zone, making up 0.5% of the park. It is mainly used for recreational activities.

Islands

The national park includes land on the islands of Baltrum, Borkum, Langeoog, Juist, Mellum, Memmert, Minsener Oog, Norderney, Spiekeroog, and Wangerooge. The areas where people live and where buildings and roads are located on the inhabited islands are not included in the national park's protection. Additionally, certain areas used mainly for recreation, such as parts of the beach, have some protection under Zone III.

Films

"Im Nationalpark Wattenmeer" is a documentary film from Germany released in 1998, lasting 45 minutes. It was directed by Jens-Uwe Heins and Michael Sutor. The film was produced by Komplett-Media-GmbH, located in Grünwald. The ISBN number for this production is 3-89672-492-4.