Butterflies dance through the air, Idas’s blues and others with similarly wondrous names. It smells like thyme. It grows between knee-high blades of grass. Only a noise in the background reminds you that you are in Munich. You don’t hear a river, but the traffic on Schleissheimer Straße. The Virginia depot in the Lerchenau district is only a few meters away. It is a home for endangered animals and plants. During a tour you get to know some of them – and also a lot about who takes care of the biotope and how.
“Then I’ll lock it now,” says one of the hostesses. Before you know it, the key is in the lock and you’re stuck in a fenced area of around 20 hectares. You can’t get out anymore. But why would you want that? Not every day you can explore a “treasure in the urban area”, as landscape architect Angelika Ruhland calls the depot. You can only enter the site during tours of the Munich State Association for the Protection of Birds (LBV). He maintains and develops the natural oasis with the state building authority and the planning office Luz landscape architects.
Growing grasses, moss lichens on the ground, it didn’t always look like that here. Frauke Lücke from the LBV points north. Until 2011 there were still houses where trees grow today. During the Nazi era, they were built to store grain. The area later received its current name as an American military area.
The care of the natural landscape is taken care of by (from left) Frauke Lücke and Heinz Sedlmeier from the LBV with architect Angelika Ruhland and Veronika Metz from the Munich State Building Authority.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Heinz Sedlmeier, Managing Director of the LBV, is as happy as a child as he leads through the biotope in a white shirt. Suddenly he takes a step to the side, pointing down in delight. The gray critter on the rocky ground is easy to miss to the untrained eye: a blue-winged grasshopper. Threatened in other parts of Bavaria, it is often encountered here. Sedlmeier suspects around 100,000 pieces in the green area. The LBV worked on the site from 2002 to 2011 and has been on board again since 2022. A lot has happened in the meantime, for example the area has grown by ten hectares of compensation area.
Angelika Ruhland is one of the people who helped develop the place from the start. She makes it clear: What you see is a cultural landscape. The planner explains: “If you didn’t do anything at all, the end state would be a forest.” In order to protect biodiversity, the depot should not be left to its own devices. Since 2015, flora and fauna have been examined every two years “so that adjustments can be made”. Again and again the care is adapted to the terrain. The “follow-up care” has been running since 2017. It is supposed to last 20 years, only then will compensation for large buildings, such as the nearby BMW research and innovation center, be completed.
Dark stones are a reminder that the area is not of natural origin. “Everything was changed by people at some point,” says Sedlmeier, pointing to an old track bed. “The tracks had to be removed because of the contaminated sites. The ballast was replaced,” explains Ruhland. The facility was not allowed to disappear completely because animals and plants had also settled there. Among those roaming the gravel are the club-crickets – one of 20 to 25 species of crickets roaming the area, according to the LBV.
Undisturbed for decades: every leaf and…
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
… every crack offers protection and peace.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
A few steps further is the former tank loading ramp. The tongue of cobblestones is a good 150 meters long and between 20 and 25 meters wide. Removing what was left of the barracks days would have been a “crazy effort,” says Sedlmeier. Ruhland adds that although this is “a bizarre situation” given the concrete, the ramp is “a pioneer site for adapted species”. Panicle knapweed and stonecrop, for example, sprout from the cracks. Sedlmeier points upwards. Three buzzards are circling. Probably a family, says the biologist. The biotope is also a retreat and breeding ground for many birds.
Those present agree that this home must be protected. Ruhland emphasizes: “The areas look like this because they were cordoned off for decades. If it weren’t for that, it wouldn’t be of the same quality.” In general, the site could not be opened because “it was not safe for traffic at the back and front,” according to the LBV boss. However, he wishes for the future that children and young people can experience nature here.
After about an hour and a half, the gate slams shut again. The depot is sealed off again. What remains is the certainty that this treasure is protected by far more than a fence.