© HZB/K. Haas (alle Fotos)
They are back: Sheep and goats graze the Wannsee campus again
The meadows are lush green, the ice saints (almost) over: Now is the perfect time for the sheep and goats to return from their winter quarters! Until late autumn, they will now graze the near-natural HZB campus in Wannsee and serve the natural preservation of the landscape - completely without a lawn mower.
The meadows are lush green, the ice saints (almost) over: Now is the perfect time for the sheep and goats to return from their winter quarters! Until late autumn, they will now graze the near-natural HZB campus in Wannsee and serve the natural preservation of the landscape - completely without a lawn mower.
On 14 May 2020, shepherd Olaf Kolecki brought his "protégé" back to the Wannsee campus. Among them are five sheep (4 white Skudden and one black Skudden-Pomeranian Landschaf crossbreed, five lambs (3 white Skudden lambs and 2 black lambs, mother is the crossbreed) and five goats (2 Boer goats, the brown and the brown-white and three goat lambs).
Since goats and sheep have different food preferences, this mixture is just right for maintaining the green areas. The grazing is particularly insect-friendly and contributes to increasing the biodiversity of the wild meadows. And also many employees have grown fond of the animals over the past year and have missed the bleating on the campus a little bit in the last weeks.
In an interview (GER) last year the shepherd answered many questions about his work.
Before the arrival of the sheep and goats, the fenced-in eastern area in Wannsee was still being cleaned up. At the beginning of the year the old meadow orchard was "revived". For this purpose, sheds were torn down and some trees were felled to give the old fruit trees more light again. The wood of the felled trees was piled up in several deadwood heaps. This has created an important habitat and refuge for insects and small animals.
Sustainability at HZB on the Intranet
The HZB is intensively engaged in sustainable action and research. An overview of the topics and measures can be found on the newly designed intranet pages on sustainability (GER).
- Green Deal Ukraina: HZB launches an Energy & Climate ProjectGreen Deal Ukraina, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is working with partner institutions in Ukraine and Poland to establish an energy and climate think tank in the capital, Kiev. The aim is to provide independent and evidence-based advice on rebuilding a sustainable energy system in Ukraine. After all, the implementation of energy and climate legislation is a prerequisite for Ukraine's accession to the EU. The project started on 1 June 2023 and will run for four years.
- “Jugend-forscht” winners at HZB (Update)Charlotte Klar and Katharina Austermann (both 18) have already come a long way: With their experiments on pyrolytic graphite, they are trying to solve a puzzle they found in the technical literature on diamagnetism. With their work, they convinced both the Jugend-forscht-Jury at the Berlin South Regional Competition and the Berlin Competition. Now, they will join the national competition which will take place from 18 to 21 May in Bremen.
- Calculating the carbon footprint of publicationsProf. Dr. Jens Eisert heads the Quantum Computation and Simulation research group, which is jointly funded by Freie Universität Berlin and HZB. The theoretical physicist recently received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council ERC for his research project "DebuQC". But Eisert is not only an award-winning scientist, he is also concerned about global warming. Last year, on the initiative of Ryan Sweke, he and his team published a proposal that deserves attention: scientific publications on theoretical physics or chemistry could include a simple table listing the greenhouse gases emitted during the research. This would raise awareness of the fact that research is not climate neutral.