Germany’s Feral Rheas: Colonialism, Rewilding, and Deep History in the Schaalsee Biosphere Reserve

Since 2000, feral rheas – flightless ostrich-relatives native to South America – have established a permanent population in northern Germany, with a count in 2018 producing a high-water mark of 566 birds. The rheas’ ability to thrive in the German heartland has been facilitated by the existence of the UNESCO Schaalsee Biosphere Reserve, a stretch of protected lands along the rewilded former border between East and West Germany. But this border in fact dates back into Germany’s deep history, forming part of the boundary between the Saxon and Slavic settlement regions in the early middle ages and becoming a colonial landscape during the period of German expansion in the twelfth century. This essay investigates the story of the rheas against the nexus of colonial encounters which brought them to Germany and facilitated their success, arguing that the German rheas can be understood as practising a form of animal resistance by rewilding a landscape repeatedly changed by human intervention.