Voluntary work for species protection

The RWE Companius team-building campaign in Brunsberg nature conservation area near Beckum is a good example of how easily voluntary work can be combined with nature conservation. RWE and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia provided the NABU-Naturschutzstation Münsterland e. V. with a 27-hectare site to enable it to go ahead with a pasturing project.

The aim was to allow grazing Konik horses and Heck cattle to keep the vegetation short so as to provide an ideal habitat for several rare species of plant.

As soon as Dr. Christoph Gehlen learned of the project, he knew at once that it was just the kind of worthwhile endeavour that he would like to support. Accompanied by five enthusiastic employees from the RWE Group and several helpers from NABU, the Head of Licensing at TSO-Strom got down to the job of cutting back the rampant border hedges in February.

The next step was to mow part of the meadow in order to get the grazers off to a good start. All those involved are very pleased with what they have achieved: “We’ve trimmed the hedges and done all the mowing work, too. That’s more than we thought we’d get done,” says Gehlen, who was especially pleased with the large number of volunteers from throughout the Group who spontaneously signed up for the project.

The meadow was mowed again in March as part of a team-building campaign by Corporate Responsibility/ Environmental Protection. On that occasion, eleven employees of the department were dispatched to help Kristian Mantel, who knows all about the nature conservation area and the work that needs doing there. “The grazing animals could have done the work themselves, except that it would’ve taken them several years to do it,” says Mantel, who works at the NABU station. “Thanks to the work done by our friends from RWE, the orchids that grow here now have ideal conditions in which to thrive.”

For the helpers, too, combining a team-building exercise with an RWE Companius project turned out to be a very worthwhile experience. And even now, they are all quite certain that they want to be involved in another such project next year.