Unteres Odertal

Lower Oder Valley National Park was created in 1995 in Brandenburg, along the western bank of the River Oder, on the border with Poland, and protects some 105 km². It is the only German national park devoted to a river floodplain.

Its workings depend on the regime of the river: in winter and spring the floods inundate wide areas of meadow and turn them into an enormous temporary wetland, and as the water withdraws, lagoons, oxbows and wet meadows are left. That cycle, which on most of Europe's great rivers has been eliminated with dykes and canalisation, is largely preserved here thanks to a system of polders opened and closed seasonally.

The result is an area of international importance for waterbirds: the flooded meadows host very high concentrations of geese and ducks on passage and in winter, and the park holds breeding populations of white-tailed eagle, marsh harrier, black stork and crane. Beaver and otter have recolonised the valley. The park cooperates with the Polish protected areas on the other side of the river, with which it forms a cross-border complex, and managing the floods is at once its conservation tool and its main point of friction with local agriculture.