Ainringer Moos

Where peat was once harvested, a thriving wetland ecosystem now awaits. Located west of Ainring in Berchtesgadener Land, Ainringer Moos has become a haven for birds and plants thanks to restoration efforts underway since 2003. Explore this remarkable natural landscape along educational nature trails, from observation towers, or on family-friendly paths around the edges of the moor.

Ainringer Moos formed around 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, as a waterlogged wetland that gradually developed into a peat bog. Human settlement and activity during the Bronze Age and Urnfield period left behind important archaeological sites, parts of which are now protected as archaeological monuments.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, peat was harvested extensively here. The operation even had its own narrow-gauge railway and peat loading station, employing hundreds of workers.

Large-scale restoration efforts began in the 1990s. Since 2003, extensive rewetting measures have helped transform the former peat extraction site into a thriving wetland habitat with reed beds, wetland forests, and numerous open-water areas.