Nature Reserve

The source of L’eau Sans Souci is located in the glacial formed landscape on the Natural Park Dümmer, part of the North German plain and tapped by a deep borehole on the southern border. The low lying, natural water resources in this particular Natural Park, are protected by massive clay and marl layers.

The Weser-Ems-Watershed runs in North South direction by the 1123 km² sized Natural Park Dümmer. Its landscape conservations area consists of the Dümmer, the Dammer Mountains, the Stemweder Mountain, several areas of moor as well as the Western Dümmerniederung.

Through the park area runs the river Hunte and several water trenches. Spacious hill moors as the Great Moor or the Oppenweher Moor are the formative type of this landscape and offer with its continuously overrun water a unique habitat for flora and fauna.
Hill moors are fed by rain water and grow so high that they are disconnected to the ground water. They are similar to a sponge, which soaks rain water. Hill moors are wetlands with international importance, they offer many rare and endangered species, especially to many threatened birds, a valuable habitat. In particular the lake Dümmer is a breeding and resting area for migratory birds.
For few years several couples of ospreys have been breeding around the Dümmer lake now, especially around its southern border, which is a quite shielded area. Also cranes, can be increasingly discovered in this landscape of unspoiled nature, in particular due to its favourable weather conditions.

As discoveries from the New Stone Age show, already in prehistoric times human beings settled in this special area with its high-producing soils and richness in species.