How a Deadly Border Accidentally Saved Europe’s Nature.

October 7th, 1961, Bernauer Strasse, right on the border of East and West Berlin. Their home is in the East, but their front windows look out directly onto West Berlin. As the German authorities close in, Margarete clings to the windowsill, ready to make a leap for freedom. Moments later, Willy drops their four-year-old son Michael into a rescue net below, before jumping down himself. The family makes it to West Berlin. As more and more people attempt daring escapes like this, the East German regime tightens its grip. Border buildings are sealed and demolished, leaving behind a barren, heavily fortified strip. And not just in Berlin. For nearly four decades, these fences, walls and watchtowers divided the whole European continent into East and West, creating a deadly no man's land in between. But today, these places look like this. The fences, barriers, watchtowers and landmines didn't simply disappear, they were taken over, reclaimed by the unstoppable force of nature. Today, this former border zone has grown into a green lifeline, stretching thousands of kilometers across Europe. That's why I'm traveling along the former Iron Curtain, to find out how one of the most heavily guarded borders on Earth transformed into an oasis of biodiversity. And why this area is so crucial to the future of European nature. Under which Germany will be governed by... Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall. By reorganizing local government in the... When we think of the Iron Curtain, we often think of the Berlin Wall, but there are more places right along the divide. Places like this one, Meutlareuth, a small village on the border between the German states of Bavaria and Thuringia. You know, walking here, I think it's unbelievable that villages this small, communities of only a couple of hundred people living here, were literally cut in half for a political border. It's insane. Villages like Meutlareuth weren't divided by accident. To understand why, conferences such as Yalta and Potsdam laid the foundations for a new political order that would divide Europe into two opposing power blocks. Much of Eastern Europe came under Soviet influence, while Western Europe largely aligned itself with the United States and its allies. Germany's war was divided into four occupation zones in 1945. Then, in 1949, two separate states were established. The Federal Republic of Germany in the West, and the German Democratic Republic in the East. Two countries, two political systems, and two very different ideologies. At first, crossing the inner German border was still relatively easy. But that changed when East Germany began heavily fortifying the border in the early 1950s. Along much of the frontier, a system of border fences was constructed, alongside security zones hundreds of meters wide and restricted areas that stretched kilometers inland. Houses, farms and even entire villages made way for watchtowers, fences and patrol roads that would only become more heavily fortified in the decades that followed. The German border developed into one of the most heavily guarded frontiers on earth. But Germany wasn't the only place where the capitalist West and communist East were kept apart. Across large parts of the Iron Curtain, from the Arctic Circle all the way to the Black Sea, villages were emptied and vast exclusion zones were established. Europe was divided by an enormous forbidden no-man's land. It's so quiet here, just listen. And honestly, that's something I've noticed all across the former border zone. The wildflowers in Sumava, the dense forest filled with deadwood, the lost villages that are now used by insects and birds, the overgrown fences and posts. It's almost like nature is slowly swallowing up history. Conservationists began noticing this a long time ago. As early as the 1970s, satellite imagery revealed a dark green belt of old growth forest First along the Finnish-Russian border. And in Germany, conservationists discovered in the late 1970s that many threatened bird species, such as the European nightjar and the woodlark, actually preferred nesting within the border zone. And that isn't really surprising. After the second world war, Europe developed at a rapid pace. Agriculture became increasingly industrialized, new roads were built and cities expanded. A major improvement in quality of life for many people, but a dramatic decline for species that depended on forests, grasslands and wetlands. Along the border, however, the exact opposite happened. East of the frontier, large areas were closed off and left largely unused. West of the border, these regions were less attractive to investors, sparsely populated and far less developed in terms of infrastructure. It was as if time had stood still here, wetlands weren't drained for agriculture, forests stayed intact, villages disappeared and roads were barely used. Plants and animals benefited from that absence of people. For many species, the infamous Iron Curtain became an unlikely refuge, a vast strip of nature where, unlike the people living there, they often found more space than elsewhere in Europe. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! In 1989, a wave of revolutions swept across the Eastern Bloc. Economic problems, political reforms and growing protest movements put increasing pressure on communist governments. And eventually, the Iron Curtain could no longer hold. The border that had divided Europe for decades collapsed completely in just a matter of months. But the fall of the Iron Curtain also put the refuge it had unintentionally created at risk. The border had kept people out for decades, allowing nature to thrive undisturbed. And now, the protection was suddenly gone. This monster of border systems was built for eternity. You never thought that it would ever change. And I actually sat with tears in my face in front of the TV and could not believe it. With all this joy, however, it was also clear in autumn 1989 that these protective, important areas are now highly threatened. Kai Freubel grew up near the border and, from an early age, discovered how important this restricted area was for wildlife. I could see the border from my children's room every day. Mines exploded at night, the headlights lit up, the GDR border soldiers with their fire-resistant weapons right at the border. So it was already... Even as a child, I grew up in a stressful situation, but I grew up in the West and had the opportunity when I was a teenager, I was enthusiastic about the bird world and explored the landscape, then after a very short time I came across that these people who despise people, these bad people, As a teenager, he starts mapping the border with his binoculars, comparing it to the normal Bavarian landscape. And as his research area expands, the results become more astonishing. Because the first results were already so impressive, we now capture 140 km border strips in the entire area of Coburg-Gronach with a large mapping project and then mapped until 1984 and had the evidence that a plethora of rare bird species only occurred in this dead strip at over 90% of the stock. One place I still like to go to is a nature reserve. There was a beautiful, nature-close stream that formed the border. There were a number of rare species in the stream. Mussels, water libellules, ice birds... ...and later beavers and otters. West? No, that's west and this is east. So this is the border, this small river. Back then, there were signs on the west side of the river saying, attention, the border of Bachmitte. And because it's such a close-to-nature river, which only remained so close to nature because it was directly at the state border, I didn't just count the shells on the west bank, but of course I also wanted to know how many there were on the east bank. When the border fell, Kai quickly realized that his unintended protected area was now at risk. He and his colleagues decided to take action. The opening of the border in Berlin was on a weekend and on the next working day, on Monday, my then boss and friend, Professor Hubert Weiger, had the absolutely right idea. We have to invite East and West German nature conservationists to a meeting right now. We actually had exactly 26 well-known signatures from GDR nature conservationists. And to our complete surprise, 400 people came from all over the GDR, from Brandenburg, from Berlin, from Saxony. And we still don't know how they managed to pass on this invitation, because there were no e-mails. There was a very bad telephone network in the GDR. It's a mystery, but that was the birthday of the Green Band. Guy tells me that today almost 99% of the greenbelt area in Germany is protected. But protecting nature along the former border didn't just happen in Germany. Across Europe people began to realize that the former iron curtain had become a green treasure trove. Local conservation initiatives started popping up everywhere and in 2003 many of them them came together under a shared European vision, the European Green Belt Initiative. Today the European Green Belt stretches all the way from the Barents Sea on the Norwegian-Russian border to the Black Sea and the Adriatic. It connects 24 countries and brings together nearly 150 organizations. Many threatened plants and animals have benefited from it over the past few decades. In the far north, the Greenbelt winds its way to Vejstsjælland Forest and wetlands that are among the most intact in Europe. A landscape where wolverines, wolves, bears and lynx still roam. Thousands of kilometers further south, the corridor passes through the forests and grasslands of central Europe. Here, species such as the European wildcat, the Eurasian lynx and countless rare insects and plants find suitable habitat. And in the Balkans, The Greenbelt links mountains, wetlands and river deltas where animals like the Dalmatian pelican, the Eastern Imperial eagle and the critically endangered Balkan lynx still survive. And this is more than just a collection of remarkable natural areas. On a continent where habitats are becoming increasingly fragmented, it also provides connection. A corridor that links nature reserves together and helps species move, reach new habitats and maintain healthy genetic diversity. And in a time of rapid climate change, connections like these can be invaluable. To see what conservation actually looks like, I joined a field trip to the Julian Pre-Alps Regional Nature Park in Italy. This was once a heavily militarized landscape because of its proximity to the border with Yugoslavia. Today, however, some of those military structures have taken on a completely different role. Bunkers that once housed soldiers now provide shelter for threatened pets. There were the soldiers who were called graniciari who, when we were little, we were, let's say, facing the river that goes from the border. One of these soldiers, when we were children of 10-11 years old, shot us with a rifle. It was also a sense of fear for us children, because with the Cold War there was a bit of fear in behaving as we children did, a more logical behavior, let's say, than the behavior of the adults. In the park, I'm meeting Alessandro, Giancarlo, Ruggerio and Mauro. Giancarlo and Alessandro grew up in this area. Ruggerio and Mauro, however, used to patrol it as border soldiers. I want to know what this place means to them, and how they've watched the valley change since the border opened. It's a beautiful place, it's wild and I like it a lot. This area is a wonderful area with very friendly people who bring behind traditions that are unique to this valley. For me, the fall of the border was a great experience. You can breathe more freedom. On a natural level, it is clear that the fact that there is no longer all this presence of the military who presided over the border, but also presided over nature and the forest area, allowed nature to develop in a more wild way. Logically, Years ago, the valley was much more exploited, it was much more cured, so the meadows were cut down, there was less forest, now the forest has advanced and nature has regained its territories. Now the forest is back, before the animals that were on the edge of the forest, now they have found courage and we also find them in the center of the village, so it is a very big change. It was very sudden and very impactful. Alessandro's story is a reminder that restoring nature isn't always straightforward. As landscapes change, so do the communities that live alongside them. Finding space for wildlife also means continuing the conversation about how people and nature can coexist. And that may well be the greatest challenge today, to keep communicating, to keep finding ways to cooperate on a continent where borders have once again become a subject of debate. To not only protect the corridor for wildlife, but keep working together across borders and between people with different experiences, interests and hopes for the future. That's why I see this former border zone as a lifeline, a safeguard for the future of plants and animals in Europe's heavily modified landscapes. But maybe even more so, I think it's a lifeline for us. One more reason to come together, keep talking to one another, keep striving towards a common goal, so that the iron curtain remains a green scar. A reminder of a past we never want to return to. It was unimaginable to stand on this bank once, on the east side. It seemed completely excluded and in my generation, in the 1970s, no one believed, even I personally, that it was ever possible to move at all in the GDR area here on the border strip. I think it's a special case of luck to have experienced this, even for my generation. And that's why the Green Band is so important, because it's a kind of landscape of memories. It reminds you of what an incredible tear ran across Germany along this border. And I think the Green Band is the best way to remember it.