Useful: This book opens your eyes to the uniqueness and value of native cultural landscapes. Informative: richly illustrated portraits of all cultural landscapes and their animal and plant species. Exciting: The author demonstrates how the protection of cultural landscapes preserves ecological diversity. Without human intervention, Central Europe would be a vast forested area and thus quite species-poor. However, around 10,000 years ago, humans began to intervene in and utilize the undisturbed nature, leading to the development of a mosaic of different landscapes - the cultural landscapes. This patchwork of various habitats became the foundation for a rich flora and fauna. Traditional orchards and vegetable gardens, colorful roadside edges and village ponds, tall herbaceous meadows and hedges, pollard trees and gravel pits, dry grasslands and low woodlands - all presented with engaging texts.