Bavaria: rooms searched for dredging work on a protected torrent

Oberstdorf (dpa / lby) - After presumably inadmissible construction work on a torrent in the protected Allgäu Alps, the police searched the premises of a suspect and a company on Friday.

Bavaria: rooms searched for dredging work on a protected torrent

Oberstdorf (dpa / lby) - After presumably inadmissible construction work on a torrent in the protected Allgäu Alps, the police searched the premises of a suspect and a company on Friday. The criminal police in Kempten formed an investigative team to document possible environmental damage and identify those responsible.

The police said that the alpine cooperative that carried out the work did not have official approval to carry out the work on the water. First of all, a person responsible for the alpine cooperative is seen as the suspect. The employees of the company that is said to have carried out the work are not suspected, although they were also searched. So far, the employees of the company are only witnesses in the case.

The Bund Naturschutz in Bayern (BN) had announced that the strictly protected Rappenalpbach near Oberstdorf had been largely destroyed by dredging over a length of one and a half kilometers. The case is now also occupying the state parliament in Munich. Environment Minister Thorsten Faithr (free voters) visited the area this week and said that the once branched stream resembled a crater landscape after the work.

Conservationists are calling for those responsible to be punished and for the original, natural course of the stream to be restored. Police have asked hikers to send photos of the area to investigators if they were in Rappenalptal between May and October.