Meetings and Events: Where has ConnectGREEN been active over the past year?

Covid-19 has meant a change for how we live and work the world over, and ConnectGREEN is no exception. Nonetheless, the team was quick to move activities online, holding its first Partner and Steering Committee meeting virtually in March. Corona has also not hampered us in pushing for increased ecological connectivity in other fora, including the Carpathian Convention COP and the convention’s working groups on Biodiversity and Sustainable Transport, nor in further disseminating project results at numerous events, including the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD), the EU Green Week, the EU Week of Regions and Cities, and the Mikser Festival in Serbia.

Advocating for ecological connectivity is hard work and we are always grateful for a helping hand. In 2020, we were thrilled to see Romanian youth advocate ecological connectivity before the Romanian President and were given the opportunity to talk about migration corridors on Slovak and Serbian television.

Distancing, but staying Connected: ConnectGREEN has managed to make significant steps forward despite Covid-19

A new series of factsheets for each of ConnectGREEN’s 5 pilot areas has been published, all available in English and national languages.

Substantial work has been done on the Map of ecological corridors in the Carpathians and experts worked on the Critical zones for ecological corridors and spatial planning in the pilot areas. Advances were also made on the development of the Guidelines on reducing conflicts in corridor areas, and a draft produced for an e-learning training tool on ecological corridors (link).

The uptake of a proposition by environmentalists for the construction of a wildlife tunnel in the last stretch of the A1 motorway construction in Romania has clearly shown that integrated planning can bear fruit.

Fieldwork continues, for instance to verify ecological corridors and barriers to the migration of large carnivores within the Czech part of the pilot area Western Carpathians.

Reminders for why we do what we do

2020 has provided multiple occasions that have solidified our motivation to further promote ecological connectivity in the Carpathians, among them a video of a wolf pack in Piatra Craiului National Park, sightings of a 3-legged wolf, who lost a limb to a car collision in Slovakia, and the arrival of new cubs in Slovakia.

Wolves have not been the only animals spotted: in Hungary, several towns observed a brown bear passing through!

2021: entering the final phase of Connectgreen

In the spring of 2021, we enter the last phase of the ConnectGREEN project. With the Covid-19 pandemic having exploded in the middle of the project's runtime, ConnectGREEN has been prolonged over the summer months to allow for the proper completion of all activities and delivery of outputs. These include the Methodology for Identifying Ecological Corridors, the Transferability Strategy for best practices, and a Youth Video Contest on ecolgical connectivity in the Carpathians.

ConnectGREEN will hold its final conference in Visegrád, Hungary, on 28-30 of September 2021, coinciding with the Carpathian Network of Protected Areas (CNPA) Conference.