Landscape of the Year 2023 - Klettgau
Intro
The Swiss Foundation for Landscape Protection has named the Klettgau, or "s'Chläggi" in dialect, in the canton of Schaffhausen as Landscape of the Year 2023. The award recognizes the exemplary partnership between agriculture and nature protection in the heart of the granary of the canton of Schaffhausen.
Successful cooperation between agriculture and nature protection
Within 40 years, the Klettgau plain, which was once considered to have been cleared, has developed into a biodiversity hotspot. A dense network of biodiversity promotion areas has been established through exemplary cooperation between agriculture and nature protection. The coexistence of intensive production and nature protection is a beacon for Switzerland's biodiversity strategy. Today, numerous bird species and the brown hare, which has one of the highest population densities here, are happy about this. The landscape has also gained in diversity, character and beauty.
Agricultural landscape with high structural and utilization diversity
The medium Klettgau in focus is an agricultural landscape with a high diversity of structures and uses. It impresses with its visual axes to the Hallau mountain church, the southern and northern edges, which are hardly obstructed by buildings. The villages are compactly situated in this large former Rhine valley. The feeling of vastness and the experience of the elemental (wind, weather, sky) also results from the typical regular aesthetics of the arable landscape with sharp boundary lines and linear paths. However, the fields are regularly interspersed with wildflower strips, extensive meadows and individual strips of fruit trees and hedges, so there is no impression of monotony even in winter. The landscape reveals the important granary, but the new biodiversity areas also make this production landscape interesting for recreation seekers and ornithologists and, thanks to the new structures and colors, perhaps soon also for painters, illustrators and photographers.
Swiss Landscape Conservation Foundation
The Swiss Landscape Conservation Foundation has been awarding the title of “Landscape of the Year” since 2011. It recognises not only the outstanding cultural landscapes themselves, but also, explicitly, the community commitment and the specific achievements of the people on the ground.
