The first year at the landscape conservation association was not an easy one for the new managing director aglaia abel. In april 2016, she took over the association from the late ralf kiesel, who had been out of office for more than half a year at the time. The changeover was not without its teething problems, as became clear at the members’ meeting held unusually late in the year. Normally this takes place in the spring. As the chairman of the landscape maintenance association, district administrator thomas bold (CSU), explains, the official deadlines for invitations were not met. So it was decided to postpone the meeting.
From the maintenance of rough grasslands in the saale valley to wet meadows in the black mountains, from the planting of fruit trees to the renaturation of waters. The landscape conservation association plans, organizes and carries out nature conservation and species protection projects in the county. In the past year, the maintenance teams have carried out a total of 49 maintenance measures for around 377,000 euros. Compared to previous years, this is a significant drop: since 2007, the annual revenue has always been more than half a million euros, and most recently it had settled near the 700,000 euro mark. And there is more unpleasant news: because of corrections in the accounting, the association has made a loss of about 46,000 euros instead of the expected profit.
Work left undone for months
"At the very beginning, we were faced with the problem that a large part of the application from 2015 had not yet been approved by the government of lower franconia.", reports abel. In other words, a lot of work had been left undone, which had completely used up the budget that had been allocated in advance for 2016. It was only when the bavarian ministry of the environment once again made funds available for landscape conservation associations in the fall that current projects were actually funded. "Fortunately, all of the mabnahmen could be approved", says the managing director.