Deer Still Shun Iron Curtain Border, 20 Years After the Guards and Barbed Wire Vanished
There's an explanation, of course. But the bigger picture is bound to irritate & annoy reactionaries who miss the Cold War, & think a "Green Belt" means the Commies won.
Well before communism collapsed, German nature lovers noticed thriving wildlife along a different Cold War border -- that between East and West Germany -- where no roads, factories or farming had disturbed the calm for decades. So on a snowy December morning in 1989, a month after the Berlin Wall fell, environmentalists from East and West met in a Bavarian border town hoping to turn the region into a conservation area. Today, much of it is a protected zone called the Green Belt.
"This border stood for the struggle for freedom and the conflict between blocs," German President Horst Koehler said recently as he walked an old patrol road. "Now this border, which meant death, pain and separation, celebrates nature and creation."
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