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201313Oct11:18

Green Heart of Europe’ ini­tia­tive launched to pro­tect nature across 12 countries

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 13 Octo­ber 2013 | mod­i­fied 13 Sep­tem­ber 2014
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WWF launched a new ini­tia­tive to save and pro­tect nature across 12 coun­tries in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe. The Green Heart of Europe aims to pro­tect the five nat­ural riches of the region: forests, wilder­ness, large car­ni­vores, rivers and wet­lands, and the Danube sturgeon.

map green heart of europeThe Green Heart of Europe has been launched at WILD 10, the World Wilder­ness Con­gress in Sala­manca, Spain, which gath­ers gov­ern­ments, busi­nesses, con­ser­va­tion and devel­op­ment NGOs, as well as com­mu­nity rep­re­sen­ta­tives from around the world to dis­cuss the pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of nat­ural habi­tats on our planet.

“From the Danube basin to the Carpathian Moun­tains, our region, the Green Heart of Europe, includes many of the continent’s great­est nat­ural trea­sures. WWF has been work­ing since the 1990s to save it for the ben­e­fit of local peo­ple and human­ity,” says Andreas Beck­mann, Direc­tor of WWF’s Danube-​Carpathian Programme.

The peo­ple of this region depend on these nat­ural trea­sures. They pro­vide us with essen­tial goods and ser­vices, from tim­ber and fish to clean water and cli­mate reg­u­la­tion, and the essen­tial ‘green infra­struc­ture’ that secures our liveli­hoods and well-​being
Ori­eta Hulea, WWF, Con­ser­va­tion Direc­tor for Cen­tral and East­ern Europe »

The new WWF ini­tia­tive cov­ers the largest remain­ing area of vir­gin and nat­ural forests in Europe out­side of north­ern Scan­di­navia and Rus­sia (with the primeval beech forests of Ukraine and Slo­va­kia) and Europe’s most spec­tac­u­lar remain­ing wilder­ness areas out­side of Rus­sia (includ­ing the south­ern Carpathi­ans and the Danube Delta).

The ini­tia­tive will see bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion among part­ners such as gov­ern­ment, NGOs and local com­mu­ni­ties as well as ensur­ing the full imple­men­ta­tion of exist­ing tools like regional and inter­na­tional pro­tec­tion frame­works, strong leg­is­la­tion and gov­ern­ment com­mit­ments to ensure the pro­tec­tion of this diverse region.

The region shel­ters two-​thirds of the Euro­pean pop­u­la­tions of large car­ni­vores such as bears, lynx and wolves. The Green Heart of Europe also includes most of Europe’s last remain­ing intact rivers and wet­lands, includ­ing the glob­ally impor­tant Lower Danube Green Cor­ri­dor and the Mura-​Drava-​Danube cor­ri­dor, also known as “Europe’s Ama­zon.” These waters are home to the Bel­uga stur­geon, a 7-​meter fish that has sur­vived since the time of the dinosaurs, but now teeters on the edge of extinction.

Threats

Unsus­tain­able resource use and poorly planned infra­struc­ture are caus­ing the loss and frag­men­ta­tion of forests, wet­lands and wilder­ness.
The trea­sures of the Green Heart of Europe are threat­ened by ille­gal and unsus­tain­able log­ging of vir­gin and other high con­ser­va­tion value Forests, con­struc­tion of roads, ski areas and other infra­struc­ture, some of it ille­gal and much of it poorly planned.
The ram­pant build­ing of hun­dreds of large and small hydro and wind-​power sta­tions — many with lim­ited ben­e­fits in terms of clean energy, but with mas­sive impacts for streams, rivers and wildlife — and unsus­tain­able agri­cul­tural prac­tices are also threats.

“We already have many of the tools needed to save the Green Heart of Europe. We have strong leg­is­la­tion, regional and inter­na­tional pro­tec­tion frame­works, gov­ern­ment com­mit­ments, eco­nomic incen­tives and strong part­ner­ships,” says Beck­mann. “Now we need to bring these together and ensure they are fully imple­mented to achieve their intended purpose.”



Nature Needs Half

Nature Needs Half is a vision for a healthy planet & a call to action. The esca­lat­ing global eco­log­i­cal cri­sis — char­ac­terised by loss of nat­ural habi­tat and ecosys­tem ser­vices, increas­ing species extinc­tions, and rapid warm­ing of the planet — has demon­strated that con­ser­va­tion efforts to date have not been suf­fi­cient to sus­tain life on earth. While this has been hap­pen­ing, our eco­log­i­cal knowl­edge has also increased dra­mat­i­cally, espe­cially con­cern­ing how much land and water we must pro­tect to sup­port life on Earth. Many assess­ments over the last 20 years have typ­i­cally deter­mined that nature needs at least half of a given eco-​region to be pro­tected, and needs to be inter­con­nected with other such areas, in order to main­tain its full range of life-​supporting, eco­log­i­cal and evo­lu­tion­ary processes, the long term sur­vival of the species that live there, and to ensure the system’s resilience in the face of envi­ron­men­tal change. Some ecosys­tems will require more than half. Pro­tect­ing and inter­con­nect­ing at least half of the planet, land and water, to sup­port all life on earth is no small vision:



(Source: WWF-​global news, 10.10.2013; Nature Needs Half)


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