The city and district of Aschaffenburg want to continue pursuing the Spessart biosphere region project. The city of Lower Main and the Aschaffenburg district office announced this after their respective meetings on Monday evening.
“In the next step, the districts of Aschaffenburg, Main-Spessart and Miltenberg will enter into dialogue with the municipalities to discuss their willingness to submit an application,” explained a spokesman for the Aschaffenburg district office. In return for appropriate compensation from the Free State of Bavaria, municipal land could, if desired, be voluntarily brought into a possible untouched core zone.
The biosphere reserve is intended to be a model region for sustainable living and business in harmony with nature. Unlike a national park, it can be used significantly more economically by people, for example by marketing regional products and promoting sustainable tourism. Conservationists support the idea of such a region in the Spessart.
The Main-Spessart and Miltenberg districts expressed their interest at the end of February. Since the summer of 2022, the region has been considering whether to establish a UNESCO biosphere region together. The votes were preceded by a feasibility study that examined the extent to which the Spessart can meet the criteria for a biosphere region.
A sticking point, however, is whether there is enough area to form the so-called core zone. The core zone is considered a nature reserve. It is planned for the Hochspessart. It can be relatively small – it only has to make up at least three percent of the entire biosphere region.
“Resistance to the biosphere region comes primarily from people with timber rights who are afraid that they will no longer be able to use their timber rights in the core zone,” said a spokesman for the Main-Spessart district. A possible solution would be to give people with timber rights other areas from which they can extract timber.