British Forces Germany’s environmental record was put firmly on the map recently with the signing of the Natura 2000 Agreement with the German authorities.

Natura 2000 is a network of ecologically protected areas throughout Europe established in line with EU directives, and includes all of the military training areas used by the British Forces.  It encompasses both Special Protection Areas for birds and Special Areas of Conservation for other species and for habitats, which may or may not geographically coincide.

To demonstrate BFG’s firm commitment to environmental protection and close cooperation with the German environmental and conservation authorities, a formal Accord – Natura 2000 - was signed recently by Major General Mungo Melvin, GOC UKSC, along with senior German officials in a ceremony at JHQ Rheindahlen.

BFG’s training areas on the Senne, Haltern, Dorbaum, Achmer and Leuth have been nominated as part of the network by the Environmental Ministries in Land NRW and Land Lower Saxony.  Usually oversight of protected areas is carried out by local government. However, where land is in public ownership, the EU directive allows for its care to be placed under a contractual arrangement, and it is such an arrangement that was signed at JHQ by Herr Eckhard Uhlenberg, Land NRW Environment Minister, and by Herr Dirk Kühnau, Board Chairman at BImA, the German Federal property agency.  Day-to-day oversight will be carried out by the German national forestry body, the Bundesforst, which is part of BImA. The signing reflects the excellent working relationship that British Forces Germany enjoys with the Bundesforst, which already oversees conservation on training areas.  
 
The Arrangement takes the form of an over-arching authority for the whole of Land NRW and will be supported by further agreements at local level.  The intention now is to achieve a similar arrangement with Land Niedersachsen.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, the GOC welcomed the senior visitors, including Herr Axel Schulze-Bierbach, who heads the Bundesforst office that supports the Sending State Forces and played a key part in setting up the Agreement, as well as many other key officials who had travelled to Rheindahlen for the ceremony. 

The General stressed the importance of the Accord and thanked the visitors for their support to BFG:

“This Arrangement is very valuable and useful because it brings a new, independent, oversight mechanism into how we look after the areas made available to us by the Federal Government.  I welcome it most warmly.  There will be new reporting procedures and care of the environment on our training areas will reflect the requirements of European legislation.  It is because our training area staff have done their job so well that our training areas are havens for species and habitats that makes them so special and worthy of protection. 

“Nature co-exists with the military in a way that does not necessarily happen in many other forms of land use. At the end of the day, we have to balance the protection of the environment with the need to train our troops or indeed carry out operations, and the lives of our soldiers must come first.”

The GOC also took the opportunity to update the visitors on the downscaled plans to upgrade training facilities on the Senne, to train troops for what is known as the Contemporary Operating Environment: 

“Many will know that we want to provide realistic facilities to train our soldiers for deployment to operational theatres, particularly in Afghanistan.  We wish to build a number of facilities which will  look similar to existing villages, temporary military bases and other infrastructure in that country, so that the young men and women we deploy into dangerous places can be given the best possible chance to familiarise themselves with the situations that they will encounter for real.  This is to help save their lives and the lives of the people in Afghanistan they are seeking to help. However, our changing military requirements, principally the cessation of combat operations by British troops in Iraq, have enabled us to look again at our proposals for the facilities on the Senne.

“We can now concentrate our efforts fully on training for operations in Afghanistan, and particularly for Helmand Province, the area for which British troops have security responsibility and undertake intensive counter-insurgency operations.  In Helmand, unlike Basra, there is very little in the way of infrastructure, so on the Senne we will no longer need to replicate paved roads, but can use the existing tracks, which are not dissimilar to the roadways in Helmand.  In addition, we will not now construct the planned cave complex on the Senne.  We are also able to reduce the number of new training villages from six to three, and the number of simulated Forward Operating Bases, from five to four.”
 
In conclusion, the GOC emphasised:
 
“I think we have achieved today, the best agreement that will not only satisfy the needs of nature protection but also enable the British Army and other allied nation’s troops - foremost the Bundeswehr - to train properly for their missions worldwide, tasks which contribute to making the world we all live in a safer place.  They deserve the best we can provide.

“I look forward now to the coming into force of this over-arching Natura 2000 Agreement covering British Army training estate in North-Rhine Westphalia – as indeed I do to agreement being reached on the further local area agreements for which this document will provide a framework, and also to a similar agreement being achieved in Land Lower Saxony.”

[Above] Left to right: signing the Natura 2000 Agreement are Herr Eckhard Uhlenberg, Land NRW Environment Minister, GOC UKSC, Major General Mungo Melvin, and Herr Dirk Kühnau, Chairman of the Federal property agency, BImA.

[Below] Left to right: displaying the Natura 2000 Agreement documents are Herr Eckhard Uhlenberg, Land NRW Environment Minister, GOC UKSC, Major General Mungo Melvin, and Herr Dirk Kühnau,.Chairman of the Federal property agency, BImA.