Ancient oak and beech forest reserve on the southern edge of the Solling, in Lower Saxony.
Wälder im südlichen Solling
Wälder im südlichen Solling is a nature reserve (Naturschutzgebiet) in the German state of Lower Saxony, located in the southwestern part of the Solling upland near the towns of Bodenfelde and Lauenförde, close to the border with Hesse. Established on 15 October 2020 under the designation NSG BR 170, the reserve covers roughly 1,016 hectares of contiguous woodland that largely coincides with an overlapping Habitats Directive (FFH) site of about 1,030 hectares. Part of the reserve also belongs to the EU Birds Directive site known as "Solling".
The protected landscape is dominated by large, structurally rich forest complexes set within the broader Solling-Vogler Nature Park. The woods include old mixed oak stands, some with over 200-year-old former wood-pasture (Hutewald) trees, alongside mature beech forests of the wood-rush type, with notable steep-slope forest communities above the Weser valley. Streams, springs, wet meadows, sandstone outcrops from a former quarry, and pockets of near-natural still water add variety to the woodland character.
Ecologically, the reserve supports a remarkable diversity of forest-dwelling fauna, including large carnivores such as lynx and wildcat, a rich assemblage of bats, breeding woodland birds such as black stork and several woodpecker species, amphibians in the small standing waters, and a very important community of saproxylic beetles associated with old and dead wood. The long-running Hutewald grazing project in the Reiherbachtal is a defining cultural-ecological feature of the area and helps shape its open, light-rich woodland structure.
