General Wildlife Corridor Plan (GWP)

The “General Wildlife Corridor Plan” connects forest habitats for native mammal species such as wildcats, red deer, lynx and wolves. However, it is not only large forest-dwelling wildlife that find their way from habitat to habitat along the GWP's wildlife corridors, but also smaller animals and even plant species, e.g. via seed transport in their fur or over several generations. In this way, they make a significant contribution to the preservation of natural biodiversity. A functional habitat network enables species to spread and repopulate suitable habitats, facilitates genetic exchange between populations and allows adaptation to habitat changes. This may be necessary, for example, due to changes or increases in land use, as a result of climate change, or due to habitat loss.

Where settlements and transport corridors cross the landscape, wildlife often encounter barriers that are impossible to overcome or even death traps. The wildlife corridors of the GWP represent some of the last remaining opportunities for large mammals to connect habitats across the largely fragmented and intensively used landscape of Baden-Württemberg. Taking the GWP into account in both landscape planning and impact regulation makes it possible to reduce the existing isolation of forest habitats and species populations. The GWP is an important tool for planning in view of the continued consumption of land in the state.

The GWP is the independent ecological planning concept developed by the state of Baden-Württemberg for a primarily forest-based biotope network. It provides an indispensable foundation at the landscape level, but does not replace local or regional biotope networks.

Together with the components of the open land biotope network and water landscapes, it forms the ‘Statewide Biotope Network Plan’ and has been enshrined in both the Nature Conservation Act for Baden-Württemberg (NatschG) and Hunting and Wildlife Management Act of Baden-Württemberg (JWMG) since 2015.

The interactive map shows wildlife corridors, ecological overpasses (e.g. green bridges), the reconnection sections over linear infrastructure and the bottlenecks caused by development.