La Rete delle Aree Protette Alpine
The bearded vulture went extinct in the Alps in the early 20th century. An international reintroduction program was started in 1986, based on the release of young bearded vultures born and reared in captivity. Up to 2012 a total of 184 birds have been released in the Austrian, French, Italian and Swiss Alps, the vast majority within protected areas. Since 1997 a total of 92 birds have fledged in the wild.
Observations from the whole Alpine Arc are being collected in the central online database of the International Bearded Vulture Monitoring (IBM), a collaboration of 12 partners all over the Alps. Currently about 55.000 observations are documented. For this study observation data from 2003 to 2012 and all reproduction events from 1996 to 2012 were used. For the analysis protected areas provided by ALPARC have been used.
Considering the Alpine part of each country, the observations of bearded vultures are quite evenly distributed. Fifty-one percent of observations have been located in protected areas. There was a considerable difference in the amount of data located inside protected areas between countries. Whereas in France 78% have been located inside in Switzerland this was found for only 28%. The majority of observations are found in National parks (79% of all observations inside protected areas).
No difference in the distribution has been found for the different age classes of bearded vultures on an Alpine scale. Since 1996 151 breeding events have been recorded in the Alps.
Out of these, 92 young bearded vultures have fledged in the wild. 65% of the 151 breeding events have been located within protected areas, but again relevant differences among the countries have been noted (Italy 92%, Austria 62%, France 53%, Switzerland 52%). On an Alpine scale bearded vultures have been almost equally successful breeding inside (62%) and outside (58%) protected areas.
Overall, 51% of all reported observations of bearded vultures and 65% of all reproduction events of the species have been located in protected areas in the Alps, which were estimated at 25% of the area covered by the Alpine arc. Thus protected areas definitely are centres of the known bearded vulture distribution in the Alps.
(Author : Richard Zink)
The Multivision "For the Alps" will be available very soon in Standard DVD and Blu-ray format.
Since its creation, the Multivision is at free disposal for all alpine protected areas, to be shown in their visitor centres or during local events (high definition data avialble for download on the website after registration).
Now, it will also be available in an easy-to-use format.
Don’t hesitate to plan projections in your area, especially in your summer programme!
More about the Multivision at multivision.alparc.org
For any question, please contact: multivision [at] alparc.org
Following a large participatory work involving more than 150 scientists across the entire alpine Arc the article "The 50 most Important Questions relating to the Maintenance and Restoration of an Ecological Continuum in the European Alps " was finally published in January 2013 in the scientific open access journal PLoS One.
In order to keep this cooperation dynamics on the topic of ecological connectivity alive and to propose first answers to the questions raised in the article, a dozen scientists and practitioners came together in Innsbruck the 26th and 27th March 2014, in the frame of the Platform Ecological Network of the Alpine Convention, for a Workshop on the topic "Take advantage of land use change for improving connectivity".
Land use change scenarios in Switzerland (based on climate and demographic changes) and their effects on ecological networks have been discussed and experiences from Switzerland, Italy and France on the transfer of knowledge between science and practice shared. All participants underlined the difficulties to get in contact with politicians on this topic and to exchange with farmers, who often only see a reduction of their productive land caused by the creation of hedges or fallow ground in the activities carried out for connectivity improvement. Science must be mobilized in order to better share their results on ecosystem service provided by connectivity for example.
Discussion show different points of interest for the alpine countries :
It's already 17 years that rangers of protected areas from the Alps meet up every year to commemorate the death of one of their colleagues, Danilo Re, who died in service. This event represents an opportunity to exchange, to meet, to consider partnership projects... or just to feel "united": together for the Alps!
This year was the Park of Adamello (I) the host of this important Alps event. 39 teams from different alpine parks, and beyond, have enthusiastically participated in a rich and varied program!
The team of the Swiss National Park is who won the sports competition, followed by the National Park Berchtesgaden (D) and the Triglav National Park (SLO)
The thematic meeting , one of the highlights of this event, was this year focused on the "Paths of the Alps: signposting, maintenance and safety". A topic that has been dealt with different points of view and which allowed participants to have a more overall view about how alpine paths are maintained, managed and restored, providing new ideas and concrete examples too.
Several rangers have stressed the importance of security as a central theme of their work. It has been regrettably noted that hikers in mountains have lost the “sense of risk” and that they tend, in case of accident, to bear the responsibility to the managers of protected areas. People have to learn to live in the mountains with natural hazards! This is an important mission for the rangers, who have the opportunity to raise awareness of families in this direction.
Here below you will find some summaries of the interventions, the results for each sport, the overall ranking and the link to the photo gallery of this event. All PowerPoint presentations will be downloadable from the website: www.danilo-re.net
We are waiting for you, numerous, for the edition in 2013, which will be held in the National Park of Vanoise (F).
A happy day for the Swiss parks: 8 parks got the label “Parks of national importance” by the Swiss federation.
In December 2007, the legal basis for the creation of new parks came into force. Therefore new parks next to the Swiss Nationalpark , which exists now for almost 100 years, were created.
Next to the wildness park Zürich-Sihlwald , which won acceptance as a nature discovery park, the UNESCO biosphere reserve Entlebuch and Val Müstair and as well the region Thal were accepted.
The following eight parks will start their operational phase fort the next 10 years:
• Landschaftspark Binntal VS,
• Parc régional Chasseral BE/NE,
• Naturpark Diemtigtal BE,
• Parc Ela GR,
• Naturpark Gantrisch BE/FR,
• Parc naturel régional Gruyère Pays-d’Enhaut VD/FR,
• Jurapark Aargau AG,
• Naturpark Thunersee-Hohgant BE (on condition that the municipalities accept the project).
Further information, you can find in the press release (in German, French and Italian) of the Swiss Parks Network .
or in the link: http://www.bafu.admin.ch/
Contact: Andreas Weissen, general manager of the Swiss Parks Network. Tel. 0041 79 549 92 41
source: Swiss Parks Network
At the beginning of the XX century, the ibex, an animal proper to the Alps, was threatened with extinction because of the high hunting pressure. Only the population of Gran Paradiso managed to survive, thanks to a law enacted by the king Vittorio Emmanuele II of Savoy.
The 8th May 1911, in the peak of Rappenloch, in the Weisstannen valley (SG) the first specimens have been released. These ibexes have been illegally imported from Italy and formed a stable colony afterwards.
100 years later, Switzerland celebrates the anniversary of this success. Nowadays, in fact, the ibex started to populate vast alpine regions, representing the best result ever achieved on a worldwide scale in the field of re-settlement of species next to extinction in their environment.
The 6th May 2011 in Weisstannen, the centenary of the reintroduction of ibex has been opened with an official ceremony. During the year span numerous organisations and organisms, among which the association Pro Natura , the Federal Office for the Environment , the Swiss Society of Fauna biology , organised a great number of events and excursions dedicated to ibex in all Switzerland.
The second international meeting of the pilot regions which proceeded in Dobbiaco/Toblach on April 22, 2010 bore its fruits. Indeed, the pilot regions adopted a common tool, entitled JECAMI (Joint Ecological Continuum Analysing and Mapping Initiative-Web services).
This instrument is proposed by the Swiss National Park in collaboration with the Arinas company;
The benefits of this initiative are numerous, indeed, it will make it possible the Pilot regions to apply a strategy harmonized in order to analyze the situation of ecological connectivity.
The pilot regions will be able to identify the ideal and priority surface to establish future measures of connectivity, then to make use of it like support of communication on Internet for the various users, and authorities.
This easily accessible tool will bring a visibility of connectivity. It will be possible to visualize at the same time the habitats of the species and the results of connectivity.
Econnect awaited an effective tool to incorporate and to combine the space results of the project and a facilitated access of all the stakeholders concerned, it’s done!
Ruedi Haller from the Swiss National Park presents the cartographic tool JECAMI
http://www.alparc.org/the-alparc-network/a-spatial-network/project-econnect
Le projet ALPENCOM s’est officiellement clôturé le 15 février 2008, mais les partenaires de ce projet Interreg IIIB Alpine Space poursuivent maintenant dans le cadre du « Groupe de Travail Communication » le travail initié durant ce projet pilote.
Le projet ALPENCOM visait d’une part à soutenir la communication entre les espaces protégés et d’autre part à développer la communication commune des espaces protégés des Alpes envers le grand public ; il a permis d’en poser les bases.
Le Groupe de Travail « Communication » d’ALPARC s’est réuni les 3 et 4 juin à Sand in Taufers, dans le Parc naturel Rieserferner-Ahrn (Haut-Adige, Italie). Depuis, le groupe a contribué par exemple à la réalisation d’un nouveau dépliant commun pour les espaces protégés alpins et encadré la mise en place de la visite virtuelle des espaces protégés sur Internet.
La restitution officielle du projet a lieu quant à elle à l’occasion de l’ Assemblée Générale d’ALPARC du 8 au 10 octobre 2008 dans le Parc national du Triglav, en Slovénie.
The first edition of eco.mont will be published in June 2009.
The journal was funded as an initiative of the Alpine Network of Protected Areas (ALPARC), the International Scientific Committee on Research in the Alps (ISCAR), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and the University of Innsbruck .
The journal aims to emphasize research and management issues in and on protected areas in the Alps without excluding other protected mountain areas in Europe or overseas. Target audiences of the new journal are: scientists from all related disciplines, managers of protected areas and an interested public including practitioners, visitors, teachers, etc.
eco.mont will be published twice a year in a joint effort of the Austrian Academy Press – responsible for the e-version – and Innsbruck University Press – responsible for the print version.
The deadline for the articles to be included in the second edition is the 1st of June 2009.
This new journal will offer a platform specifically for scientists working in and on protected mountain areas.
We would like to introduce to you the newly installed homepage of eco.mont on www.oeaw.ac.at/ecomont . We would be glad if you could link this homepage to yours.
2008 was a very important year for ecological networks in the Alps. Here is a brief overview of everything that has been done :
After 17 months of intensive work during the pre-project phase, the four partners (CIPRA, ISCAR, the WWF and ALPARC) have presented the results that will form the foundations for moving ahead with the practical work on ecological networks in the Alps.
The methodology for establishing ecological networks was out together by a range of scientific experts and has now been finalised and published. The methodology is available at www.alpine-ecological-network.org . The catalogue of measures will also be available soon.
The pilot areas in Austria and Switzerland have already held initial meetings with the key local contributors and activities have now begun in the regions. Meetings with the stakeholders in Germany are due to be held in the near future. In France, the Isère département has begun the operational phase of its large-scale project to recreate biological corridors in the Grésivaudan valley, which includes installing special "animals crossing "warning signs at key points on the road network, alterations to water plants, major awareness-raising campaigns, and more.
The Alpine Space programme — a European Territorial Cooperation programme — has approved a project proposal with a budget of over EUR 3 million on this subject. The official launch of the ECONNECT project was held in Vienna in early November 2008 (see article ).
The German presidency of the ecological network platform of the Alpine Convention has commissioned consultants to devise selection criteria to identify potential pilot Alpine sites for the creation of ecological network projects. In January 2009, France will take over the presidency of the platform for two years (to end-2010).
As you can see, 2008 was a very fruitful year for ecological networks. Not only have we been able to establish a common approach and vision for the Alps, we have also put the first few pieces of the Alpine ecological network in place. We hope that 2009 will be equally productive, so that we can see even more of the bigger picture emerge.
In the course of the collaboration between ALPARC and REEMA (Alpine Mountain Environment Education Network, which covers the French Alps), we realised that we needed a better understanding of the practices and programmes associated with education about the mountain environment in other Alpine protected areas.
In 2008, we began the first review of all such programmes, focussing primarily on innovation. We identified around 40-odd heads of unit responsible for this area to whom we sent a short, 10-point questionnaire. We have received around 20 responses so far from five Alpine countries.
The compendium is made up of summary factsheets: currently all the documents are available in French and English and some are also available in the relevant national language. Each factsheet includes a contact name and website.
For example, you can learn what a park school is, or find out about mixed-age walks, junior rangers, climate education or the game "following the tracks of the wolf". The compendium is available online at www.alparc.org (under Our actions, Environmental education and awareness-raising ).
Of course, the aim is to promote discussion of different experiences within the network. So this is just the beginning: the members of REEMA have already found the results useful and work will continue in 2009 so as to keep on adding to the compendium.
In 2010 we plan to hold the first meeting of environmental education officers.
We would be delighted to hear about your experiences. Contact Marie Stoeckel for more information or to request a copy of the 10-point questionnaire (available in all four Alpine languages).
In order to improve the preservation of large carnivores in the Alps and the Carpathians, the international colloquium "Large carnivores: management, research and public relation strategies of the protected areas" was organised in the Nizke Tatry National Park in Slovakia from 2nd - 4th July 2009.
More than 70 specialists of protected areas, universities, NGOs and ministries in the Alps and the Carpathians met in Liptovsky Jan / Slovakia to broach the complex and often taboo issue of the symbolic species of the mountains: the bear, the wolf and the lynx.
The general presentations of the current situation in both massifs were followed by other lectures, in which participants communicated the results of their research activities, particularly in the field of species’ monitoring, migration and health problems. The main part of the meeting was dedicated to exchanges on the subject of the management of these species, especially in regard to management plans, measures of compensation and conflict management between human activities and these animals. The last session of presentations principally treated the importance of communication activities, environmental education and public relations.
The significance of a very close cooperation between both massifs in this subject was raised during the discussions. To emphasize this cooperation it has been decided to create a common working group "Large carnivores" between ALPARC and CNPA. This group ought to meet soon, after the nomination of a working group leader on the part of the Carpathians.
At the end of this meeting, a brochure about large carnivores in protected areas of the Alps and the Carpathians was published.