Eifel

Declared in 2004, Eifel occupies land that served as a British and Belgian military training ground for much of the Cold War, which paradoxically held off any agricultural or building development for decades and allowed a marked recovery of wildlife once the troops left. The artificial Rursee lake and its half-buried bunkers now sit among regenerating woodland where the European beaver, reintroduced in the 1980s, is once again actively shaping the river landscape.