Jura landscape
The region belongs to a broader Jura context where forests, slopes, passages, and transitions between habitats create a strong ecological and geographical identity.
Ecosystems
Reading living territories through structure, continuity, and ecological pressure
NATURASCHUTZ.CH approaches ecosystems as living territorial systems shaped by relief, forest structure, corridors, habitat continuity, human presence, and the movement of wildlife across the landscape.
Introduction
Within NATURASCHUTZ.CH, ecosystems are not reduced to broad surface descriptions. They are read through their internal structure: passages, slopes, forest edges, bottlenecks, human activity, and the fine conditions that shape ecological continuity.
Reference Territory
Langenbruck, Chilchzimmersattel, and the surrounding Jura landscape
This region occupies a central place within NATURASCHUTZ.CH. It is approached as a sensitive ecological territory where wildlife movement, forest continuity, relief, and human presence interact in complex ways.
Corridor function
The territory is important because it helps reveal how wildlife movement depends on fine-scale continuity and the permeability of the landscape.
Territorial sensitivity
Human activity, built structures, roads, and recreational use all influence the ecological quality of the region and the way species can still move through it.
Living ecological system
This is not only a place of observation, but a real ecological system where structure, pressure, opportunity, and fragility can be read together.
Field-Based Proof of Concept
More than four years of territorial observation and analysis
Over more than four years, this region has served as a field-based proof of concept for the approach developed within NATURASCHUTZ.CH: a fine-scale reading of ecosystems through relief, corridors, forest structure, human presence, habitat continuity, and wildlife movement.
This long-term engagement gives the territory a particular value. It is both a local ecological concern and a reference landscape for independent observation, monitoring, and conservation reflection.
Two-Sector Study Area
A territorial division for fine-scale ecological reading
The study area has been divided into two sectors in order to better understand how landscape structure, openness, passages, and human pressure influence wildlife movement and ecological continuity.
Sector 1
The first sector is now completed and represents the most advanced part of the territorial analysis. It has made possible the reconstruction of a lynx route over more than 5 km, with an estimated spatial precision of approximately ±10 m.
Special communication site
Within this sector, a site has been identified and interpreted as a place of olfactory communication between male and female, revealing the fine ecological meaning of a specific location.
Sector 2
The second neighbouring sector is more open and more challenging. It highlights a different ecological reality in which continuity, shelter, and territorial use become more difficult to interpret.
Ecological meaning of absence
One of the major lessons of this second sector is that absence also has meaning. The lynx may be absent for periods of several months, and this discontinuity helps clarify the ecological conditions of the territory.
Landscape Structure
Relief, forest edges, passages, and bottlenecks
The ecological meaning of the territory emerges through its internal forms: slopes, ridgelines, openings, cover, discreet passages, and points of constraint where movement becomes concentrated or fragile.
Relief
Topography influences visibility, cover, movement possibilities, and the discreet use of space by wildlife.
Forest structure
Internal forest organization, edges, and transitions between cover and openness shape the ecological quality of a territory.
Passages
Fine-scale passages are essential for understanding how movement remains possible across a human-shaped landscape.
Bottlenecks
Certain points become critical because they reveal how ecological continuity may persist or fail within the wider territory.
Human Presence
Roads, trails, farms, houses, and patterns of activity
Human presence is not treated as background noise. It is part of the ecological reading itself. Roads, trails, farms, houses, and recurrent activity influence how permeable or restrictive a landscape becomes for wildlife.
Roads and fragmentation
Roads can act as barriers, disturbance axes, or structural breaks depending on their intensity and ecological position.
Trails and disturbance
Recreational routes modify calm zones and influence how discreetly wildlife can still use a territory.
Farms and built structures
Agricultural areas, houses, and infrastructure reshape spatial behavior and must be integrated into the interpretation of territory.
Permeability
The key ecological question is how continuity persists or weakens under the influence of human occupation and activity.
Approach
Independent territorial analysis in service of conservation
The ecosystems approach within NATURASCHUTZ.CH is grounded in observation, ecological interpretation, and long-term territorial attention. It seeks to understand how living systems function in place, how they respond to pressure, and where their continuity remains vulnerable or still possible.
This approach is scientific, field-based, and independent. It is guided by the protection of biodiversity and by the need to read the landscape with precision, honesty, and ecological depth.
Contact
For dialogue around ecosystems, corridors, and territorial monitoring
NATURASCHUTZ.CH welcomes exchanges related to ecological continuity, forest territories, wildlife movement, local ecosystems, and field-based conservation analysis.
Get in touch