The landscape ecologist and senior employee in the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment, Ursula Schuster, will become the new head of the Bavarian Forest National Park. Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber said this in Munich on Tuesday. “I am very pleased that in Schuster we have been able to gain a highly competent new manager for our national park in the Bavarian Forest,” said Glauber. “The national park has been a flagship for nature conservation for more than 50 years. With Schuster, a woman is at its head for the first time.” Schuster will take over the management post on August 1 of this year, when current boss Franz Leibl retires.
Schuster, 47, was born in Passau and is therefore originally at home in the national park region. She began her career in the state administration in 2007 at the Bavarian Academy for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management in Laufen, Upper Bavaria. From there she moved to the Ministry of the Environment and the State Chancellery. In the Ministry of the Environment, she was responsible, among other things, for planning a third national park in Bavaria, which the then Prime Minister Horst Seehofer wanted to set up in Bavaria in 2016 and 2017, but which later failed due to the strong resistance of the population in the selected regions. Most recently, Schuster headed the office of one of the two heads of department in the Ministry of the Environment. The landscape ecologist has an excellent reputation not only in environmental administration, but also with the relevant associations and organizations.
The Bavarian Forest National Park is the oldest and still the most renowned of the 16 national parks in Germany. The large protected area on the German-Czech border was founded on October 7, 1970, covers an area of almost 25,000 hectares and, with 1.3 million guests a year, is a magnet for visitors that radiates far beyond the region. Leibl, born in 1957, has been at the head of the national park since May 2011. His term of office not only marked the 50th anniversary of the protected area, but also the expansion of the so-called core zone to just over 75 percent of the area. Except for securing the paths and paths, no intervention is made in it in accordance with the National Park principle “Let nature be nature”.
Core zone expansions have historically been a major area of contention in the region. It is credited to Leibl that she was able to complete it silently and without resistance. The 75 percent mark is important for the high international ranking of the protected area and its reputation. Leibl reached them five years before the specified date. He is currently managing the planning of the small visitor center and the barrier-free expansion of the path network in the small extension area in the south of the national park, which was set up for its 50th anniversary. Glauber thanked the departing head of the national park very much for his “personal commitment and the great feeling” with which he has steered the fortunes of the protected area over the past eleven years.