Lüneburger Heide

The Lüneburger Heide district is one of four government districts in Lower Saxony in the north-west of Germany. It has an area of 15,500 square kilometres and 1,590,000 inhabitants. The borders are mainly determined by the Elbe river in the north and north-east, the Weser river and the North Sea in the west and the southern border in the south of the River Aller. The district lies between the cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Hannover which are all outside the district. As the position between these cities indicates, there is no homogeneous rural area but structurally differing areas. On the one hand there are the rural areas surrounding the urban and suburban regions which profit from the close proximity to the cities and on the other hand the structurally weak areas which are far away from the cities.

The Lüneburger Heide district enclose 11 counties. Five of these counties have been recognized as "Objective 5b" areas by the European commission for the period 1994 ? 1999 and 9 districts belong to the Leader-II-area.

The countryside in the north is dominated by large areas of forest and in the west by grassland. About 4 % of the district is under nature protection. In addition to this there are wide areas of protected countryside. Because of the nature of the countryside the Lüneburger Heide district is an agricultural and forestry region. 25 % of the employees in the processing industry are in the food industry, the largest branch of industry in the district. The tourism sector is another important sector especially the promotion of regional food and regional products. For that reason Lüneburger Heide decided to participate in the Culinary Heritage network with five counties: Celle, Lüchow-Dannenberg, Lüneburg, Uelzen und Soltau-Fallingbostel.