A rehabilitated glacial moraine landscape defined by former opencast mines, rising mining lakes, and quiet cultural countryside.
Naturpark Niederlausitzer Landrücken
The Naturpark Niederlausitzer Landrücken is one of eleven designated nature parks in the German state of Brandenburg, occupying roughly 580 square kilometers in the historical region of Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz). It lies west of the famous Spreewald, stretching between the towns of Luckau and Calau in the east, the Dahme river valley in the north, the small town of Dahme/Mark in the west, and the area around Sonnewalde and Finsterwalde to the south.
The defining character of the park is the unusual combination of two contrasting landscapes. At its center lie vast post-mining opencast pits left behind after the end of lignite coal extraction in 1991, a stark, sandy terrain sometimes described locally as a moon landscape. Around this unusual core, traditional rural Brandenburg scenery continues: meadows, farmland, fish ponds, historic village cores, manor houses, water mills, and wooded ridges like the Rochauer Heide.
Ecologically, the park has become one of the most unusual nature recovery stories in eastern Germany. Abandoned for more than two decades, the mining areas have filled with groundwater and water diverted from the Spree, creating new lakes, swamps, dunes, and pioneer habitats that now shelter rare insects, amphibians, waterbirds, and one of the largest crane gathering and roosting sites in Germany.
