Wälder und Wiesen bei Burbach und Neunkirchen: A Protected Landscape in the High Westerwald Region

The protected area "Wälder und Wiesen bei Burbach und Neunkirchen" was formally designated as a European Special Protection Area under the EU Birds Directive by regulation of the Arnsberg regional government in 2001, with site code DE-5214-401. The designation responded to the obligation under European Union law to conserve wild bird species listed under the Birds Directive and the habitats on which they depend.

Beyond the formal SPA designation, the area's conservation profile was actively developed through a pilot project on the hazel grouse in the Siegerland during the late 1990s, documented by Ewers, Schmidt, and Weiss in the forestry journal Forst und Holz (1999). This work highlighted the area as one of the last refuges for the species in North Rhine-Westphalia and informed later protection measures. In 2005, the state agency LANUV published a bird conservation measures plan for the SPA, formalizing habitat management goals for the site's key breeding birds. The area also overlaps with a range of previously designated Habitats Directive sites and nature reserves, indicating a longer history of habitat-level protection preceding its formal bird-area status.

The site is recognized first and foremost for its breeding birds, which were the explicit reason for its designation under the EU Birds Directive. It hosts North Rhine-Westphalia's largest breeding population of the whinchat, a meadow-breeding species dependent on extensively mown grasslands with insects, perches, and late-season unmown refuges. It is also one of the last confirmed breeding areas for the hazel grouse in the state, a forest species that requires structurally rich, multi-layered woodlands with edges, young successional stages, and abundant insect food for chicks.

In addition, the protected area holds important breeding populations of several forest and open-ground specialists. These include black woodpecker, grey-headed woodpecker, middle spotted woodpecker, Eurasian pygmy owl, Tengmalm's owl, and black stork in the woodland and stream-valley habitats, alongside red kite and honey buzzard over the broader landscape. Open-ground species such as red-backed shrike, great grey shrike, Eurasian stonechat, and corncrake rely on the meadow, heath, and hedge mosaic, while meadow pipit and European golden plover use the wetter openland areas. The combination of breeding, foraging, and sheltering habitat for all of these species in one continuous landscape is the area's main wildlife significance.

The site's conservation significance lies in its role as a designated EU Special Protection Area under the Birds Directive, with formal species-specific conservation objectives for a wide range of breeding birds. Designated in 2001 and managed under the Arnsberg regional government, it forms part of Germany's Natura 2000 network and is one of several SPAs in the Arnsberg administrative district with a focus on upland bird communities.

The conservation strategy emphasizes the maintenance and development of near-natural mixed and beech forests with substantial amounts of old and dead wood, the preservation of montane hay meadows and wet grasslands through extensive mowing and grazing, and the protection of structural diversity in juniper heath, hedges, and stream corridors. Specific management measures include delaying grassland mowing until mid-July in whinchat areas, reducing disturbance at breeding sites, maintaining large old trees and cavity trees for woodpeckers and owls, retaining unhazardous fencing and avoiding new wind turbines in hazel grouse territory, and protecting open wetland complexes for black stork. The area also overlaps with multiple Habitats Directive sites (FFH-Gebiete) and nature reserves such as Gambach, Mahlscheid, and Weier- und Winterbach, reinforcing its role in the regional conservation network.

Although the protected area is presented primarily through its ecological and ornithological significance, its landscape carries a long history of human use. Coppice woodland, montane hay meadows, and juniper heath are not natural relics but products of centuries of low-intensity forest and grassland management. The names of surrounding places such as Oberdresselndorf, Altenseelbach, and Liebenscheid reflect the small-scale, dispersed settlement pattern typical of the High Westerwald, where villages have traditionally been embedded in working woodland rather than separated from it.

The late-1990s hazel grouse pilot project in the Siegerland is also a cultural-historical note of relevance: it represented a focused regional effort to retain a species emblematic of the traditional mixed woodland landscape at a time when the broader forestry sector was moving toward more uniform management. The protected area can therefore be read as much as a working cultural landscape as a purely natural one.

Among the protected area's strongest distinguishing features are its combination of large, near-natural beech and mixed forest complexes with intact montane hay meadow systems on the High Westerwald plateau, and its overlap with the tri-border zone of three German federal states. Its designation as an EU Bird Directive site simultaneously protects the state's largest whinchat breeding population and one of its last hazel grouse breeding sites.

The forest composition, including significant Tilio-Acerion slope and ravine woodland and alder-ash gallery forests, is a further highlight, as is the broad array of bird species for which specific conservation objectives have been drawn up, ranging from woodpeckers and owls to open-country shrikes and ground-breeding waders such as the corncrake and black stork.

The protected area's ecological value is tied strongly to the breeding season, when meadow-breeding birds such as whinchat, stonechat, and corncrake are present and active on the extensively managed grasslands, and when forest specialists like woodpeckers, owls, and hazel grouse are most easily detected in the woodlands. Late spring through mid-summer is broadly the most rewarding period for birdwatching interest.

For broader landscape enjoyment, late spring and early summer also bring flowering montane hay meadows and full leaf cover in the beech forests, while early autumn can offer more open visibility in the meadows as the hay is cut. Winter visits emphasize the structural character of the beech forests, juniper heath, and stream valleys, though breeding bird activity is then largely absent.