Protection of Meadow Birds in Coastal areas of Western Pomerania (Germany)
The EU LIFE project Limicodra focuses on the protection of waders breeding on coastal meadows in Western Pomerania (North Eastern Germany). It specifically aims on the improvement of breeding success in salt marshes along the lagoon system (so called Bodden- and Haffküste).
The Acronym Limicodra derives from Limicoles or waders – an order of small to medium-large wader birds – and Odra, the name of the estuary of the river Oder (its western part) into the Baltic Sea – our project area.
The 5 project sites are situated at the southern shore of the Bay of Greifswald, the Peene Stream and the western part of Oder Lagoon. They lie almost entirely within the confines of areas of national or international protection status, within the Nature Parcs Usedom Island and Stettiner Haff and SPAs (Special Protected Areas for the protection of birds).
The project has a lifetime of 8 years and will last until september 2025. Its long lifetime allows optimizing the breeding habitats in several steps, which we consider necessary to allow recolonisation of habitats and an enlargement of populations. Our experience gained by this project will be used to elaborate a strategy of how to continue our efforts after the project. It can be used for other coastal areas with comparable problems.
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QGIS course
This is also part of our work: Creating maps to show, for example, where exactly our godwits have bred in the Mönkebude polder or where the ditches run and dams with optimization needs are located.
Experts examine and discuss our surfaces - What we can do even better
From 02-05.04.23 Ole Thorup, luminary for meadowland birds, especially for the Ruff, employee of our project partner Amphi International and Vice-Chairman of the International Wader Study Group was on the road with us, our project partners and other meadowland bird experts from the Netherlands and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on our project areas as well as neighboring project areas (polder Leopoldshagen, Karrendorfer and Kooser Wiesen, island Koos).
Read more … Experts examine and discuss our surfaces - What we can do even better
The mobile protection fences in the polders Bugewitz and Mönkebude as well as in the Freesendorfer meadows are in place.
We start into the new season. As every year, our mobile protection fences are up again in the polders Mönkebude (2 pieces) and Freesendorfer Wiesen.
EU LIFE+

LIFE ist the financial instrument of the European Union for funding actions of environmental protection. Abbreviation LIFE comes from french translation L`Instrument Financier pour l`Environment. Since 1992 over 4500 LIFE projects were co-financed by this programme.
Nature and biodiversity is the financing programme for projects in nature conservation. Funding innovative pilot projects in Natura 2000 areas supports the network of these international nature conservation sites.