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The SaveGREEN Team wishes you a safe, calm, and festive holiday season!
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Before the holiday season truly gets underway, we’d like to share some positive news about SaveGREEN project efforts to draw stakeholder attention to the vital topic of ecological connectivity. It’s time to recap and celebrate the latest milestones achieved through close collaboration with all of our project partners!
We’re pleased to say that the project is in full swing and that the partnership consortium is making significant progress! With the ConnectGREEN project officially ended, it’s now SaveGREEN’s turn to pick up where its predecessor left off – that is, getting relevant stakeholders to place ecological connectivity high on their respective agendas.
Despite the fact that COVID has made fieldwork much harder, partner enthusiasm remains sky-high. In the background, while widely promoting the topic of ecological connectivity across the CEE region, we have also developed plenty of promotional materials, which are available here.
Please join us on the journey to create more space for wildlife in nature! You can follow all the latest SaveGREEN-related news here as well.
You can also learn here about the key lessons and takeaways from SaveGREEN’s predecessor, ConnectGREEN. Help spread the message!
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We are about to finalise our third project period, which means further development and implementation of lots of new activities!
Key milestones that we’ve achieved in the past six months are listed below:
- The app-developer team has finished testing the Q-field app, and its integration is in progress.
- The cross-sectoral operational plans (CSOP) have been drafted to be discussed and agreed upon with the local working groups in the upcoming period. The plan is created to recognise the site-specific pressures and threats related to ecological connectivity, land management and barriers for wildlife in each SaveGREEN pilot area. Based on the monitoring results and discussions with the stakeholders, measures for the improvement of the functionality of ecological corridors will be developed.
- Policy-related updates: there is ongoing collaboration with the Carpathian Convention; the project being presented at the last Carpathian Convention Implementation Committee Meeting held in Krakow, Poland, 18-19 November 2021. The idea to go for a joint declaration on ecological connectivity and spatial planning for the next EU Strategy on the Danube River Annual Forum was well-perceived; support was committed for its development and engagement of other relevant stakeholders like the EUSDR Priority Area 6 Biodiversity Steering Group.
- On-going advocacy work and interventions to promote Green Infrastructure funding measures at the national level in relation to Operational Plans, the review of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU, and the National Recovery Plans.
- Standardisation: The policy team has had exchanges with European standardization bodies, namely SABE, CEN-CENELEC, and AFNOR on the current state of development of ISO/TC 331 on Biodiversity. The work is in its very early stages, and we will therefore see how to further become engaged and contribute with the expertise gained in SaveGREEN.
- Synergies and networking: Project Partners promoted SaveGREEN at several big events: presentations were held by WWF and the Environment Agency Austria giving an overview of the project and on the monitoring toolbox at the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation organised online by the Road Ecology Center (UC Davis), USA. The Conference allowed for a global exchange of topics related to ecology and transportation and invited participants to virtual discussion tables of smaller groups in a new format.
- The Hungarian partners created a forum for fruitful discussions at the IENE conference in Budapest, also at the MAVIGE conference at Lake Velence, Hungary.
- Our presence on social and third-party media has thus far reached 150,000 people!
- Field trips and info-days in the pilot areas – whenever and wherever possible in pandemic conditions – were held in several countries, namely in Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. These activities help to increase engagement and spread awareness about the importance of ecological connectivity – for people and wildlife alike.
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INTRODUCing our PILOT AREAs
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In the last newsletter we introduced our first four pilot areas, but the full view is incomplete without the addition of two pilot areas in Romania, the beautiful Zakarpattia region of Ukraine, and the Rila-Verila Kraisthe pilot area in Bulgaria.
Let’s check them out, shall we?
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The Arad-Deva pilot area comprises the Mureș River valley and its surroundings, along with one of the largest rivers in Romania, the Mureș. This creates a complex landscape that provides many natural benefits, both to humans and wildlife. Human interventions in these landscapes, however, can make life quite difficult for the Brown bear (Ursus arctos), Grey wolf (Canis lupus), or the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), as well as for smaller animals such as bats, reptiles and amphibians, and even fish. Learn more how SaveGREEN will contribute to preserve this valuable habitat.
Factsheet |
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Târgu Mureș- Târgu Neamț (Romania)
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The Târgu Mureș - Târgu Neamț area stretches along three counties and links two major historical regions: Transylvania in the west, and Moldova to the east. Transport infrastructure, built and fenced areas, channelized rivers and dams, and power lines are the biggest threats in the area to nature. Learn more about how SaveGREEN contributes to conserving these critical ecological corridors.
Read more
Factsheet
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Rila-Verila-kraisthe (Bulgaria)
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This pilot area is located deep in the Dupnitsa Valley. Drained by the Struma River and its tributaries, the area is flanked by the Rila and Verila mountain ranges and the region of Kraishte to the southwest of the capital, Sofia.
SaveGREEN will investigate the effectiveness of already-functioning green infrastructure elements and mitigation measures in this important pilot area.
Read more
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zakarpattia region (Ukraine)
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The Zakarpattia region is located in western Ukraine, within the Zakarpattia lowlands and on the western slopes of the Ukrainian Carpathians. It is home to Europe’s largest areas of virgin forests. A critical area for cross-border wildlife migration, the Zakarpattia region is one of the most important eco-corridors for the migration of large carnivores between Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and Hungary, and throughout the Carpathians generally.
Read more |
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A LOOK TO THE FUTURE - WHAT’S NEXT FOR SAVEGREEN?
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● 5 Transnational workshops will aim to address a local issue/case study that the pilot areas are facing. However, they also serve the project-level aim of sharing experiences and methods.
We expect people from the pilot areas, the project consortium, including Project Partners and Associated Strategic Partners, and external experts to participate in these transnational workshops. Overall, there will be 5 of them organised in the first half-year 2022. Dates should be fixed in January to be able to plan and invite international experts (e.g. IENE network or BISON PPs).
● Capacity building starts next year with national workshops on how to integrate ecological corridors in environmental assessments, like EIA, SEA, and Appropriate Assessment, also touching upon the topic of environmental cost/benefit analysis.
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IENE Conference | Cluj Napoca, Romania
20-24 September 2022
“An integrated approach for mainstreaming biodiversity in transports” with contributions from the SaveGREEN Project; negotiations are ongoing.
More info
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SaveGREEN Transnational workshops
2022 March-July
Transnational workshops will be held in each partner country to facilitate exchanges of experience and concrete solutions relevant for the preservation of ecological connectivity in the pilot areas and beyond.
More info coming soon
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7th Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning | Budapest, Hungary
30 June - 3 July, 2022
The Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning is held every three years to bring together experts who are influencing landscape planning, policy making and greenway planning from the local to international level. The conference provides an opportunity to publish full papers in published proceedings.
More info
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RECOMMENDED PAPERS/PROJECTS CONNECTED TO SAVEGREEN’S MAIN TOPIC: GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE:
The Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment, which should be a final repository of the project results and a great lesson to learn from.
The BioSTREAM portal is a parallel project that deals with many SaveGREEN issues in the Dolomites and Alps (e.g. data standardisation of biological measures and monitoring to be used in EIA/SEA tools to support green transition and implementation at local level; maintenance of huge databases combined from different sources; production of common, easy-to-use data registers of habitats and species, etc.).
‘Indicators for Elevating Mountains in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’, a GRID Arendal publication, has main policy aims that are similar to those of the SaveGREEN project.
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Be a part of the SaveGREEN mission! Follow the track!
Follow our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated and gain exciting green infrastructure insights!
Stay safe, stay curious!
See you in a greener and more connected Europe in 2022!
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