Sonja

Of course it will promote different plants and critters now than the drained lumberplantations before. Unfortunately one of the first mammals that came out to cheer and show itself to visitors often was the American Muskrat. Whats relly great are the rarer ralidae making a come back in the last years in spite of the feral rodent loving eggs.

I dont know if they do anything at all. There are so many "animal friends" that see them as people, sort of like human imigrants, or they are simply besotted by the wiggly noses and beady eyes of whatever ends up in our set aside habitats including racoons, tanukis, minks. Openly discussed management usually gets controverse fast in our times.
As for the Pfrunger Ried, we also got American Slider turtles in there, probaply a lot more than eurasian Emys. Those are ocassionally cought and moved to big public zoos meanwhile, after all it is easy to get them without harming them, but somehow they seem to thrive whilst the rare native turtle vanishes silently again not to long after a few new onel of them are released to the wild, but thats the problem of the swabian Heimatbund and their pond system at Willhelmsdorf, not in this part of the peatlands. At the Tiefenbach, just at the corner north of Fuenfeckweiher lives that Muskrat, and it does so for several years now. Soon it will build a porch complete with easychair and flag in front of it's house, the way it shows it's presence in the same spot for years... Of course it is super cute, and so far I never saw two of them there, so with luck thats no colony, just a hermit homesteader.

And there are real beavers, family dens in several places troughout the area. I just never met one, only those teeth marks on trees way to big for the little american muskrat and reports and pics by managment and other people. There is no den close to a public path and for us it is some drive there on curvy backcountry roads, we rarely stay long enough for dusk and there are many differences in Muskrat and Beaver sleep patterns, the rat shows in less sunny weather even at high noon and it gets up and outside on mild winter days, beavers do not do this...
There is a study that says Muskrats rather avoid beaver-managed zones, whilst the little Water Voles (Arvicola amphibius) do noticably well alongside beavers, they just move den should the water level rise suddenly, but not so in a muskrat infested area as their helpless new offspring is a special delicacy to an almost trice sized food competitor. So the beaver is sort of the bodyguard of it's smalest and native omnivore near-look-alike.