History of the Land Use

The royal Bavarian general inspector von Hazzi (1798) describes the condition of the moorland before the cultivation like this: "The residual land is covered commonly with open pasture on immense bogs, being greatly present between the inhabitations, revealing a horrid sight of mountain pine covered growth, rendering a rather conspicuous landscape."

By digging ditches in the beginning of 1800, people started draining and diminishing the peat moorland. Originally the extracted peat was used for the Rosenheim Salt evaporation ponds ("Rosenheimer Saline") and later for beer brewers in which it was transported over the Munich - Salzburg railway line. The peat won by hand by the farmers only had a subordinate significance. After ending the heavier peat mining by plow in 2005 in Kollerfilzen, only a small and more ecological orientated harvest remained in the moorland "Abgebrannte Filze", where peat is yielded for health bathes. This peat is still transported out of the moorland with the last active field train of Bavaria.

Great parts of the exploited peatland was planted during the last century by spruce trees which are not adapted for this kind of peat soil. Within the rewetting measures of this project these trees have to be felled in order to avoid the spreading of bark beetles (Scolytidae) on weakened spruce trees.

In the peat lowlands of the "Auer Weidmoos" and the "Kaltenaue" the original wetland forests were cleared during the medieval. Afterwards the meadows were commonly used by the farmers as pastures.

Just about the last 150 years, former pastures were used by cutting the grass for winning stall litter. This way valuable ecological landscape, rich on rare species of life, was recovered.