After three years of intensive cooperation between local alpine farmers, the State Institute for Agriculture (LfL), the Association of Forest Owners in Chiemgau and the Berchtesgaden National Park Administration, a grazing project in the Park is completed. Siegfried Steinberger of the LfL has been advising local farmers on ways of adapting the pasture regime to the effects of climate change since 2016.
In the grazing expert’s opinion, there is a total of three factors that play a major role in optimising the usage of feed crops and at the same time preventing the alpine pastures from overgrowing with weeds and bushes: a timely moving of livestock to the meadows as a matter of adapting it to the earlier start of vegetation; an adaptation of the numbers of animals to the increased biomass growth on the pastures; a grazing guided with the means of electric fencing for a more even use of the alpine meadow area.
As part of the undertaken project, grazing began three weeks earlier than usual, the number of grazing animals was increased, fencing was installed. A positive result became clear during the final inspection in September 2019: highly productive and green up to autumn grazing pastures with hardly any weeds or bushes on them could be seen. The partaking alpine farmers confirmed the successful ness of the methods’ implementation and described them as effective and applicable.
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