Uckermark Lakes Nature Park is a nature park and reserve in the state of

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squ ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. It covers an area of 895 km² (346 sq mi).Nature Park
/ref> It was established on May 3, 1997, and is located on the northern edge of Brandenburg state. The nature park is bordered to the north by the Feldberg Lake District Nature Park, to the west by the

Stechlin-Ruppiner Land Nature Park Stechlin-Ruppiner Land Nature Park is a nature park and reserve in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. It covers an area of . It was established on July 1, 2001. It includes Lake Stechlin, home to the endemic Stechlin cisco ''Coregonus fontanae'' ...

and to the southeast by the

Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve The Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve, often shortened to Schorfheide, is a biosphere reserve in the German State of Brandenburg near the Polish border. The reserve was established on 1 October 1990 following the German Reunification and ...

. The landscape was marked by the last ice age 15.000 years ago: pushed moraine with numerous lakes and ponds, extensive woodlands, mires, dry meadows and

heaths A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...

. Many left behind blocks of stone, called erratics, are evidence of the glaciers from Scandinavia. The

Heraldic beast In heraldry, a charge is any emblem or device occupying the field of an '' escutcheon'' (shield). That may be a geometric design (sometimes called an '' ordinary'') or a symbolic representation of a person, animal, plant, object, building, or ...

of the nature park is the

osprey The osprey (''Pandion haliaetus''), , also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor reaching more than in length and across the wings. It is brown o ...

, which lives here in an unusual density. Other rare animals such as the

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morp ...

, the European otter, the

European pond turtle The European pond turtle (''Emys orbicularis''), also called commonly the European pond terrapin and the European pond tortoise, is a species of long-living freshwater turtle in the family Emydidae. The species is endemic to the Western Palearct ...

and the

European crayfish ''Astacus astacus'', the European crayfish, noble crayfish, or broad-fingered crayfish, is the most common species of crayfish in Europe, and a traditional food source. Like other true crayfish, ''A. astacus'' is restricted to fresh water, livin ...

, are living there. One of the rare plants, the straw yellow Early Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata subsp. ochroleuca (Europe)) based here.

References

Nature parks in Brandenburg Protected areas established in 1997 {{Brandenburg-geo-stub