Mreža zavarovanih območij v Alpah
The dystopic short film "Last Flower“ describes how the world in 2069 could look like if humanity failed to achieve the necessary climate goals. Will there be enough hope to save humanity? The film has been made by and with the kids from the Berchtesgaden National Park (DE) within the Interreg Alpine Space project YOUrALPS.
The short film "The Insect effect“ (original title: Der Insekteffekt) is all about the long-term impacts of biodiversity loss. In a very creative way, it links matters of ecological relevance and biodiversity in Alpine spaces and beyond, with social aspects such as humanity. The film was made by and with kids from the Berchtesgaden National Park (DE) within the Interreg Alpine Space project YOUrALPS.
Official video from the 3rd edition of Youth at the Top!
The final conference of the Interreg Alpine Space projet ALPBIONET2030, will take place the 8th and 9th October 2019 in Chamonix.
Please save the date, further information will be available soon on the project web site here: https://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/alpbionet2030/en/home
This working group’s main objective is to foster exchanges between educators in the protected areas in order to share various pedagogical activities and tools, to identify future opportunities for collaboration and to define common needs for the working group itself. The group meets every two years in a different protected area in the Alpine arc to discuss different key themes. This exchange allows for educators and project managers to discover new approaches and to exchange experiences and practices. In the past few years, the group also gave feedback on the international project ‘Youth at the Top’ with the aim of further improving the initiative. The latest working group meeting was held in Triglav National Park (SL) in 2018 and different debates took place on the use of new technologies in outdoor education and youth participation in protected areas.
The ESD in the Alps working group was originally created in 1998 as a communication working group with the goal of being a horizontal group that touches upon a wide range of topics. In ALPARC's early years, the emphasis was on developing internal communications by fostering exchanges between the managers of Alpine Protected Areas. The working group also incorporated various communication initiatives, such as the results from the ALPENCOM project from 2005 to 2007, whose goal was to establish a communication and information exchange system for the sustainable management of natural resources in the Alps and to ensure a regular exchange, training and common planning on environmental management issues.
The Memorial
The Memorial Danilo Re is a two-day sports event and the largest gathering for Alpine park rangers and managers, whose day-to-day work is dedicated to conserving and protecting Alpine biodiversity. Protected areas form teams and compete in four sports categories: mountaineering ski, giant slalom, shooting and cross-country. In 2018 a record number of 50 teams from Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia and even Slovakia took part in the Danilo Re Memorial event.
Moreover, the Danilo Re Memorial is an opportunity for those working in Alpine Protected Areas to get acquainted with each other. It symbolizes the friendship, efforts and shared objectives of all communities accommodating Alpine Protected Areas. It is more than just a sporting event, as the memorial presents itself as an opportunity to promote the Alpine territory on an international level and to highlight tourism, sports and hospitality in the protected areas.
The Danilo Re Memorial consists of:
Danilo Re was a ranger and botanic expert which died from an accident in 1995 while on the job. A sports competition in memory of his legacy was first held in 1996 in the Piedmont region for park rangers. It was later opened to national and international participation and integrated a theme-based seminar.
For more information, please see the official website:
ALPARC is the lead partner of two innovative Alpine Space projects: ALPBIONET2030 and YOUrALPS. These two projects have been running since 2016. The projects outputs and results are now ready to be presented and discussed during the projects’ final events from October 8th to 11th in Chamonix and Chambéry (FR).
ALPBIONET2030: Protecting habitats and species by enhancing ecological connectivity is the main focus of this project. In this context, transnational cooperation is the key to harmonising the interventions required for nature protection. Moreover, it will develop over time the proper planning and tools needed to ensure effective and efficient ecological connectivity for biodiversity conservation.
The ALPBIONET Final Conference will be a unique opportunity to get to know the project results and approaches and to further discuss their implementation in day-to-day work for Alpine biodiversity and the protected areas.
The project’s website can be found here.
Registrations are still open and are available here.
YOUrALPS: Educating young people to sustainable development in their Alpine territories is a prerequisite for a lively future in the mountains. On the scientific basis of Mountain-oriented Education, the partners of the project have developed a lot of activities to adopt innovative approaches in school to favour young people’s understanding of their changing environment and to re-connect them to the natural and cultural heritage of the Alps.
The YOUrALPS Final Conference will be the perfect occasion to learn more about the innovative pedagogical approaches that have been developed in the last three years and to exchange with teachers, students and educators from different educational backgrounds.
The project’s website is available here.
Registrations are closed, but if you wish to take part to the conference please contact us by email: info@alparc.org
A peatland is a particular type of wetland that can be found in naturally intact areas and is generally known for storing greenhouse gasses (GHGs). In the scientific language it is a GHGs ‘sink’. In fact, worldwide peatlands store more carbon than all other vegetation types combined. However, due to climate change and other external conditions, a peatland might turn into a ‘source’ of GHGs, releasing CO2 and methane in the atmosphere.
This is what happened to the Monte Bondone’s peatland (Italy, 1563m above sea level) due to temperature increases. This ecosystem was studied for three years by Italian and Irish researchers that discovered that the wetland released a considerable amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (J.W.M. Pullens et al., 2016)1 . This finding is in contrast with what has been observed to date in most of European peatlands. The cause? Mostly the shortening of the snow period, a rise in temperatures and a decrease in precipitation.
Taking action
Peatlands are key habitats contributing to climate change mitigation. However, some of them are threatened by human exploitation and climate change. For these reasons, different states in Europe are taking action in order to enhance peatlands’ ‘sink’ function and to avoid them turning into CO2 ‘sources’. EUROPARC Federation insists that restoring peatlands is a powerful means to fight against climate change and pollution being that peatlands are “the most efficient terrestrial carbon-sink in the world”.
In the Alps
The LIFE project “Tourbières du Jura” aims at restoring 60 peatlands distributed in 16 Natura 2000 sites in the Doubs and Jura departments. Different restoring interventions that have been carried out are giving positive results that will ultimately benefit a surface of more than 600 hectares. These results will be presented on Thursday 14th November 2019 during a conference dedicated to Alpine wetlands in Annecy (FR).
The regional government of the Bavarian Alps is carrying out operations (singe 1998) for the restoration of endangered peatlands by means of increasing the amount of water and removing young trees and bushes.
And elsewhere
Together with nine partners from Poland, Germany and the Baltic states the LIFE Climate Mitigation project “Peat Restore” aims at rewetting degraded peatlands for an area of 5,300 hectares to restore their natural function as carbon sinks.
The managing organizations of the protected areas of the North of England are collectively investing an unprecedented amount of money and energies for the restoration of damaged peatlands during the conservation works season 2019-2021.
Sources
The article from EUROPARC:
https://www.europarc.org/news/2019/07/restoring-peatlands/
The measures taken in the Bavarian Alps:
https://www.cipra.org/en/good-practice/peatland-restoration-in-the-region-of-the-alps-in-bavaria
The LIFE project “Tourbières du Jura”:
http://www.life-tourbieres-jura.fr/
Conference on Alpine wetlands – 14 November 2019 in Annecy (FR):
“Zones humides de montagne, « Amortisseurs » et 1eres victimes des changements globaux ?”
The LIFE project “Peat Restore”:
https://life-peat-restore.eu/en/
The commitment of English protected areas’ managing organization to preserve peatlands:
https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/the-latest/recent-news/moorlife-2020/the-conservation-works-season-of-20192021-is-set-to-be-the-biggest-yet-for-peatland-restoration
[1]. J.W.M. Pullens et al., 2016, Carbon fluxes of an Alpine peatland in Northern Italy, in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, ELSEVIER.
The aim of Destination Parks was to find a common ground on how to develop and promote a shared vision, strategy and implementation of sustainable forms of tourism in the Alpine protected areas. During the one-year project period, ALPARC organized one online and four in-person meetings. Partners from most of the Alpine countries actively participated in these events amongst others. They represented different kinds of protected area and park networks and thus, a large diversity of interests, ideas and needs.
The final conference took place in Bern, Switzerland and was hosted by the Swiss Parks Network. ALPARC presented the final report’s main findings and openly discussed with all attendees. In order to highlight the cooperation that emerged (thanks to this project) between Valeurs Parcs, France and the Swiss Parks Network, the evolution of the respective projects and their partnership were presented. It is a very typical example of how the network provides its members with services, and in this case, through the linkage of actors formerly not in contact.
The general outcomes of the conference embraced several ideas on how to continue the cooperation on the project’s goals. It was agreed that it is important to continue the cooperation on sustainable tourism and the role of protected areas. Several leading questions and general assumptions were identified:
A new project or second phase will be proposed on these topics.
Recent studies found that more than 75% of insects have disappeared during the last 30 years in Europe (Vogel, 20181). As they constitute more than 60% of all known animal species, they are an integral part of ecosystems both as pollinators and prey for other animals. This is alarming knowing that it is thanks to insects that our kitchens are full of fruits, vegetables and almost all our food. Indeed, insects have been pollinating year after year the plants that we eat, granting successful harvests and abundance of food. Hence, the dramatically decreasing numbers will have a large impact on human society in the medium to long run.
In this context, future generations are particularly concerned about insects’ disappearance. For this reason, the Interreg project YOUrALPS aimed at raising Alpine youth awareness on the issue. This led to the creation of “The Insect Effect”, a video on the long-term impact of biodiversity loss – and more specifically, the dramatic plunge in insect numbers.
This short film was created and recorded by and with young people from Berchtesgaden National Park (DE). Eleven German kids had the opportunity to spend 4 days training with a professional video maker and an environmental expert to produce the following video:
[1] Vogel Gretchen, “Germany’s insects are disappearing”, in Science, Oct. 18, 2017, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/germany-s-insects-are-disappearing accessed 23-09-2019
The Alpine protected areas are united in their goal of preserving the natural heritage of the Alps and play a major role in nature conservation due to their unique ecosystems and expertise. There are nearly 1,000 protected areas in the Alps, covering a surface area of over 53,000 km2. This makes up over 28 percent of land under the jurisdiction of the Alpine Convention.
Protected areas are categorized based on their management objectives and protection status. By definition, nature conservation is the core task of protected areas. In addition, there is an increasing need for cooperation with various economic sectors such as tourism, agriculture and forestry. The focus varies depending on the protected area category and management objectives. The integration of protected areas into regional development planning is becoming increasingly important in order to maintain or increase their acceptance by the population.
APAs have a shared geographical base and values that allow them to work together on common Alpine issues. ALPARC cooperates with protected areas to implement concrete actions and projects around its three areas of work: Biodiversity and Ecological Connectivity, Regional Development and Quality of Life and Education for Sustainable Development in the Alps. ALPARC also facilitates the exchange of knowledge and shared experiences between protected areas.
