Im Briehl/Schafwiese Nature Reserve: Mapping the Restored Selz River Floodplain in Rheinland-Pfalz

The reserve was formally placed under protection in 1990, when the responsible authorities in Rhineland-Palatinate issued the legal ordinance establishing Im Briehl/Schafwiese as a Naturschutzgebiet in the Alzey-Worms district. From the outset, its designation reflected a broader aim: not just to shield a single patch of land, but to anchor ecological connectivity along the Selz and across its wider catchment.

For most of its existence, the reserve's central element, the Selz river, ran through the area in a heavily straightened course shaped by generations of agricultural land use. That changed in 2020, when the Selzverband, the inter-municipal association responsible for the river, commissioned a renaturation project covering roughly 1.7 kilometers of channel between Gau-Odernheim and Bechtolsheim. The work was carried out between September 2020 and January 2021 and combined reshaping of the riverbed, the creation of meanders, and the construction of two wetland biotopes and one still-water biotope with an island. The roughly 700,000 euro project was funded at about 90 percent by the Rhineland-Palatinate environment ministry and the Aktion Blau Plus program, and tied into the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive.

Since then, the site has also become a modest point of community reference. In June 2023, several evangelical congregations in the surrounding villages jointly held an open-air baptism service along the Selz within the reserve, an event that reflects how the restored stretch of river has gradually become part of local cultural life as well as ecological infrastructure.

The landscape of Im Briehl/Schafwiese is shaped by the valley of the Selz, a small lowland river that cuts through the gently undulating farmland of Rheinhessen. Within the protected area, the terrain flattens into a narrow floodplain bordered by slightly rising agricultural land and dissected by regional roads (the L 436 to the west and the L 414 to the southwest). The reserve itself reads as a green ribbon of damp meadow, reed bed, dense shrub growth, and vineyard edge threaded along the river.

The 2020 to 2021 renaturation fundamentally reshaped the surface character of the site. Where the Selz previously flowed in a relatively straight, channelized course across roughly 18 hectares of land, the river now winds through the reserve in a series of bends, creating shallow side zones of varying wetness. The new course generated two wetland biotopes and a still-water biotop with its own island, further diversifying the ground-level morphology of the floodplain. Outside the immediate river zone, the landscape continues as vineyards, fields, and successional patches that gradually transition back into open farmland. Looking southward from the reserve, the dome of the Petersberg rises as a local landmark, and a planned viewing level on its slope is meant to frame the restored river landscape as a single scenic unit.

Ecologically, Im Briehl/Schafwiese is a floodplain biotope complex rather than a single uniform habitat. Its core is the Selz and its riparian zone, where near-natural bends now alternate with calmer side waters and small wetland patches. These aquatic and semi-aquatic zones support reed beds and other tall herbaceous vegetation typical of lowland European river corridors.

Surrounding the river corridor, the reserve includes a mosaic of drier and damper habitats. Vineyards along parts of the protected perimeter are part of the cultural landscape of Rheinhessen and contribute structural edges and open ground for species adapted to disturbed, sun-exposed sites. Between the vineyards and the river, shrub thickets and stands of trees provide denser cover, while damp fallow land and old field sites are in various phases of ecological succession. Together these elements create a gradient from wet reed and still-water communities through scrubby transition zones to drier vineyard and field margins.

This mosaic sits within a larger conservation logic. The reserve is managed explicitly as a component of a Selz-wide biotope network; its ecological value depends not only on the habitats within its boundaries but on its function as part of a corridor running across the river's drainage area.

While the source material does not enumerate individual species, the reserve's structure points clearly toward the kinds of wildlife it supports. The Selz itself, with its restored meanders, slow-flowing side arms, and still-water biotopes, provides aquatic and semi-aquatic habitat for invertebrates, amphibians, and fish typical of Rheinhessen lowland streams. Reed beds along the banks host typical wetland birdlife, while the dense shrubs and hedgerow-like growth supply shelter and nesting sites for small passerines and other small fauna.

Beyond the river corridor, the mosaic of vineyard margins, scrub, and damp fallow land offers habitats for species that depend on structurally varied landscapes rather than on a single ecosystem. The conservation ordinance explicitly identifies the area as a living space, partial living space, resting area, wintering site, and stepping-stine biotope for typical and rare, threatened animal species, underscoring its role for fauna that may not reside permanently within the reserve but rely on it as part of a wider landscape.

Im Briehl/Schafwiese is significant from a conservation standpoint because it stitches together multiple types of habitat along a short stretch of river. Within a region dominated by intensive agriculture and vineyards, the reserve preserves near-natural riparian vegetation, reed beds, and successional areas that would otherwise disappear, and it does so in a way explicitly designed to maintain ecological connectivity along the entire Selz.

The 2020 to 2021 renaturation project deepened this conservation value considerably. By reintroducing meanders and still-water biotopes within a previously straightened channel, the project restored processes that are central to the ecological identity of lowland rivers: natural water retention, sediment dynamics, and habitat diversity along the riverbanks. Because much of the funding came through Aktion Blau Plus and the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, the reserve also serves as a local case study in how European and state-level water policy translate into concrete habitat restoration on the ground.

Although primarily a natural site, Im Briehl/Schafwiese has acquired a modest cultural dimension through the surrounding communities. The reserve lies within commuting distance of several small villages in the Alzey-Worms district, including Gau-Odernheim and Bechtolsheim, and the surrounding landscape is shaped by the centuries-old vineyard culture of Rheinhessen. Vineyards border parts of the protected area, linking the site into both the agricultural economy and the regional identity of the wine-growing area.

In June 2023, the restored stretch of the Selz became the venue for a communal baptism festival organized by several evangelical congregations from Bechtolsheim, Gau-Odernheim, Framersheim, and neighboring villages, drawing on the symbolic association of flowing water with renewal. The event reflects how the renatured river landscape has begun to take on meaning not only as ecological infrastructure but as a shared local place.

The standout features of Im Briehl/Schafwiese are its restored meandering Selz river channel, its newly created wetland and still-water biotopes including a small island habitat, and the dense mosaic of reed beds, shrubs, vineyards, and damp successional land that frames the river corridor. The reserve stands out for combining a small footprint with active ecological restoration tied directly to the EU Water Framework Directive.

A planned viewing level on the nearby Petersberg slope is intended to make this landscape legible from above, framing the reserve as a reconstructed piece of Rheinhessen floodplain rather than a hidden backwater. Together, these qualities make the site a compact but representative example of modern, program-funded river renaturation in an intensively farmed agricultural region.

The reserve is best appreciated in late spring and summer, when reed beds and riparian vegetation are in full growth and the differing wet and dry zones of the floodplain are easiest to distinguish visually. Early summer mornings and evenings are particularly suitable for observing wetland birdlife along the Selz and for walking the nearby vineyard paths without disturbing active wildlife.

Late autumn and winter also have their own character: with leaves off the shrubs, the meanders of the renaturated Selz and the outlines of the still-water biotopes become more visible, and the area's increased capacity to absorb high water events is most apparent during this period. Visitors interested in the renaturation project itself may find these quieter months useful for reading the landscape as a hydrological intervention rather than purely as a nature site.