Animal gardeners in action

Horses, cattle and sheep are characterised by completely different behaviour and feeding patterns, which also have an effect on the area. This diverse effect (called multispecies effect) has enormous advantages for the biodiversity of flora and fauna.

In order to obtain indications of the development of biodiversity in the Kienberg Ark Park, monitoring has been carried out since 2019 to examine the vegetation and the species of butterflies, grasshoppers and ground-nesting birds. The external planning office Förster has documented the results of the first year of investigation, according to which there are no noteworthy valuable plant communities so far and the species diversity is rather low. Based on comparative data in subsequent years, it will become clear how grazing affects the areas.

For example, bat and red-backed shrike (bird species) numbers may increase significantly around grazed areas. Various meadow nesting birds find much better conditions in mosaic grazing areas than in areas that become weedy, boggy, or are only mowed. Insects, reptiles and amphibians can also benefit enormously from landscape management through extensive grazing.

On the grazing areas of the Ark Park on the Kienberg, you can observe cattle of the red Highland breed, horses of the Dülmen breed and sheep of the Skudde and Coburg fox sheep breeds. The dark bee also belongs to the Ark Park on the Kienberg, but its keeping and breeding takes place at an off-site location in Brandenburg with a professional beekeeper. The selected horses, cattle and sheep are very robust and used to year-round life in the wild from birth. A protective shelter is available for winter and bad weather situations.