From Iron Curtain to Green Belt

The New Scientist magazine's environmental blog posted this fascinated tidbit last week about an initiative to turn the long Cold War frontier between east and west into a nature haven, complete with parks. "The coolest part of this has got to be the fact that tanks and snipers used to patrol this corridor, and now it has become a strip of greenery and wildlife," the writer notes. While the piece says the initiative has been in the works for years, I can't recall ever reading or hearing about it anywhere, ever. It would seem to have the makings of a great feature story, and I hope one or more of the major publications will tell us more about it soon. This effort is highly reminscent of the "rails to trails" movement, which works to convert the right-of-way from thousands of miles of de-commissioned rail lines into nature-friendly trails for hiking and biking.