Eurosite Annual Meeting: Improving natural sites – join forces and prioritise your conservation actions
Finland, 25-27 September
Metsähallitus Parks & Wildlife Finland is hosting a combined event consisting of the Eurosite Annual Meeting and a Natura 2000 Biogeographical Process (Boreal region) Thematic Networking Event to enhance the ecological effectiveness of collaboration approaches and on the other hand to investigate alternative funding mechanisms to support these approaches.
The meeting is structured around three main themes:
- Funding and possibilities: Voluntary work, private sector, compensations and habitat banking, etc. as mechanisms for conservation and management of biodiversity
- Collaboration: Twinning and systematic biogeographic planning in the management of N2000 areas
- Cost -effectiveness: Restoration prioritisation, Ecologically justifiable Low Hanging Fruits (LHF)
We first aim to identify best practices of using alternative funding mechanisms and collaboration possibilities in the management of N2000 areas. We focus on topical issues of voluntary work, involvement of the private sector, as well as the potential of conservation areas in compensation approaches like habitat banks to mitigate ecological damage caused by development projects elsewhere.
Secondly, we aim to enhance collaboration between N2000 managers by identifying possibilities for systematic biogeographical planning, i.e. to define common goals and needs and then means to meet these goals and targets more effectively through collaboration. Systematic biogeographical planning was identified as a key measure for enhancing the cost-effectiveness of management of N2000 areas in European scale in the Boreal N2000 biogeographical seminar autumn 2016.
As the third point in our endeavor to facilitate cost-efficient management of N2000 areas at the EU level we will tackle the topic of Low Hanging Fruits (LHF). The LHF approach, i.e. identifying Natura habitats where improvement would be most effectively achieved, was discussed thoroughly in the Boreal N2000 biogeographical seminar 2016, and a need to further develop the preliminary methodology towards ecologically justifiable LHFs was agreed upon.
Identifying best practices for using alternative funding for N2000 area management and determining ecologically cost-effective Low Hanging Fruits and systematic improvement approaches enable participants from different countries to plan and establish effective twinning projects and to find sufficient funding mechanisms that best support these projects and approaches.