Half of all species worldwide are now threatened by extinction. In Saxony-Anhalt alone, this affects 1,500 plant and animal species.
For the European wildcat pictured here, things are literally getting tight. It lives in dense, near-natural forests. Urban development and the resulting fragmentation of nature and landscapes are increasingly limiting its habitat.
Biodiversity is under growing threat from the climate crisis. Extreme weather events such as droughts and dry periods are also causing problems for many species here in Saxony-Anhalt.
In 2017, under the leadership of our then Environment Minister Claudia Dalbert, we therefore launched the Species Survival Program. Since then, this funding program has provided financial support for a wide variety of measures and projects throughout the state that serve to preserve biodiversity, nature conservation and water protection. In the state parliament, we are working to ensure that funding for this program is not cut or even eliminated by the current state government.
Wetlands, floodplains, bogs and other bodies of water are also suffering greatly from the climate crisis. Many wetlands have been drained by humans over the past centuries. At the federal level, we in the SPD, Greens, FDP coalition are now addressing these challenges in the “Natural Climate Protection Action Program”.