stilt houses
Beavers endanger archaeological site in Inkwilersee
The cantons of Solothurn and Bern want to protect the stilt houses on the island of Lake Inkwil from beavers. The rodents use the island, which lies on the border between the two cantons, as a home and endanger the preservation of the archaeological site.
Published: 5 minutes ago
The cantons of Bern and Solothurn want to protect an archaeological site on the large island in Lake Inkwil from beavers.
The island is located in a nature reserve, the cantons of Solothurn and Bern announced on Tuesday. The beavers settled a few years ago, said Regine Stapfer, deputy cantonal archaeologist for the canton of Bern, of the Keystone-SDA news agency on request.
In the summer of 2018, the archaeological service of the canton of Bern found that the beavers had dug tunnels in the water and on the island. According to the cantons, the animals worked their way through several layers of timber from the Bonze and Neolithic periods.
The settlement remains of the pile dwellings are between 3000 and 5500 years old, said Stapfer. The remains of the settlement are largely unexplored and the island is part of the Unesco World Heritage Site “Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps”, which brings together 111 sites in various countries in the Alpine region.
The relevant departments of the two cantons and the federal government developed a project that is both nature conservation and to prevent further impairment of the cultural heritage. As a central measure, a grid is to be laid, fixed and covered on the floor of the island and up to ten meters into the lake. In the future, the beavers should no longer be able to dig on the island.
The communities affected, Bolken SO and Inkwil BE, as well as the national nature and environmental protection associations, would rate the project positively, the communiqué reads. A replacement building is being built on the smaller island of the lake for the beavers.
The project costs around 800,000 francs, which will be borne by the federal government and the cantons concerned. The grid is to be built between November 2023 and February 2024 due to various closed seasons.
(SDA)