
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


The Iron Curtain was an accidental wildlife haven. 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tom Heap walks the borderlands to see how nature has continued to thrive.
Before the fall of the wall naturalists in West Germany had noticed that some bird and mammal species favoured life in the deathzone with its lack of human disturbance. When the Soviet bloc crumbled they joined friends and colleagues in the East to declare a Greenbelt through Europe, from Trieste on the Adriatic to Lubeck on the Baltic.
Against the odds their campaign has met with great success, creating new migration routes for some of Europe's biggest mammals whilst keeping developers away from most of the old border between East and West.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
By BBC Radio 44.7
5454 ratings
The Iron Curtain was an accidental wildlife haven. 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tom Heap walks the borderlands to see how nature has continued to thrive.
Before the fall of the wall naturalists in West Germany had noticed that some bird and mammal species favoured life in the deathzone with its lack of human disturbance. When the Soviet bloc crumbled they joined friends and colleagues in the East to declare a Greenbelt through Europe, from Trieste on the Adriatic to Lubeck on the Baltic.
Against the odds their campaign has met with great success, creating new migration routes for some of Europe's biggest mammals whilst keeping developers away from most of the old border between East and West.
Producer: Alasdair Cross

7,683 Listeners

1,044 Listeners

5,425 Listeners

1,785 Listeners

1,797 Listeners

1,098 Listeners

2,116 Listeners

1,922 Listeners

267 Listeners

347 Listeners

338 Listeners

89 Listeners

481 Listeners

24,234 Listeners

4,058 Listeners

141 Listeners

3,188 Listeners

728 Listeners

14,371 Listeners

1,609 Listeners

3,148 Listeners

2,072 Listeners

1,024 Listeners

13 Listeners