Schmeer Sand + Kies GmbH

The family business Schmeer Sand + Kies GmbH has always attached great importance to sustainability in its more than one hundred years of company history. This company philosophy also applies not least to the sustainable protection and preservation of the biodiversity of the flora and fauna at the quarrying site.

At a time when the populations of many species and species groups are in dramatic decline (biodiversity crisis, insect mortality etc.), biotope and species protection is particularly important to the company management. For this reason, Dr. Christoph Bernd, a field biologist specializing in this field, was commissioned in 2016 to develop and implement a targeted biotope and species protection management system. The objective is the innovative concept of permanent management during ongoing operations in order to dovetail the economy more closely with ecology. An approach that goes far beyond the legal requirements and has the potential to make a decisive contribution to the long-term conservation of endangered species in open land habitats.

Management is based on two independent surveys. The first is a basic survey of the existing species inventory and the second is an analysis of the ecological development potential of sub-areas, which can provide information on which species can be particularly promoted as target species through optimisation measures. The first surveys already yielded evidence of spectacular species such as the praying mantis, the rare blue-winged grasshopper, the very rare wheatear or the green beach grasshopper, which had never before been recorded in Saarland, and provide evidence of a species community that is unique in the state.

The preservation of this species population and the promotion of colonisation by other biotope-congruent, rare and endangered species is the primary goal of biotope and species protection management. The pillars of the conservation concept are the protection and preservation of valuable biotopes on the one hand and the specific protection of certain target species and target species groups on the other. While biotope protection focuses on the preservation and redesign of characteristic open spaces, practical species protection is about supporting the designated target species through specific optimisation measures. A total of three biotope conservation and eleven species conservation projects are currently underway, with more in the pipeline.

As the family business, which has been in existence for over one hundred years, has always endeavoured to live up to its responsibility for nature and the environment and the company management is particularly concerned about protecting biodiversity, it is only logical that it has joined Biodiversity in Good Company, which has set itself the task of protecting biodiversity and stands for the dovetailing of economy and ecology. 

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