Netzwerk Naturwald - Austria’s wild heart

In the triangle between the National Park Kalkalpen, the National Park Gesäuse and the Dürrenstein Wilderness Area - you will find exceptional natural and near-natural forests. The Dürrenstein Wilderness Area is home to the largest remnant of primeval forest in the Alps, covering some 400 hectares. Back in 2012, the three protected areas joined forces to strengthen the ecological connectivity of the forest areas in this region - the Netzwerk Naturwald was born. Netzwerk Naturwald means Network of Natural Forests. In the meantime, the Netzwerk Naturwald has grown and the Styrian Provincial Forests, the Austrian Federal Forests, the City of Vienna with its spring protection forests in the region as well as the three nature parks Steirische Eisenwurzen, Niederösterreichische Eisenwurzen and Ötscher-Tormäuer are now partners in the Natural Forest Network.

In a spatial analysis, a search was made for remaining old grown forests that could serve as stepping stones between the protected areas in order to functionally connect the beech-dominated mixed deciduous forests and thus maintain the high biodiversity in the long term. During this analysis, some suitable areas were found even though it became apparent that old-growth forests are already rare even here. In the meantime, three pilot areas have already been permanently secured as stepping stones.

In 2017, areas in the Kalkalpen National Park and the Dürrenstein Wilderness Area were declared UNESCO World Natural Heritage Sites. It is the only World Natural Heritage site in Austria, in addition to numerous Austria’s World Cultural Heritage sites, and they are the only beech forest World Heritage sites in the Alpine region. This has further increased the priority for functional connectivity. It is now no longer a regional but a national and international concern.

In the spatial analysis, the area southwest of the existing wilderness area already stood out in 2015 due to the old-growth forests. This has led the province of Styria to start working with the Austrian Federal Forests and the management of the Dürrenstein Wilderness Area towards a protection of these areas. The planning and negotiations were lengthy but recently the final agreement was announced. An area of about 3,500 hectares in Styria complements the existing wilderness area and doubles its previous size. The fact that it has been possible to create a new wilderness area of this size in the Alps is a sensation in itself. The fact that this has been achieved across two federal states is an even greater achievement.

It is interesting to note that here, too - as in the case of the Netzwerk Naturwald - a private initiative provided the impetus. While the Netzwerk Naturwald was initially supported by the Swiss MAVA Foundation, two Austrian entrepreneurs accompanied the expansion of the wilderness area and also provided generous financial support.

For the Netzwerk Naturwald, this expansion means a big leap forward as can be seen on the map below. A large part of the remaining old-growth forest is now protected in the enlarged wilderness area. The distance between the protected areas has thus been significantly reduced. Nothing is as important to the ecological challenges of the coming decades as old growth forests. This realization is also increasingly finding its way into European policy under the term proforestation and will probably also shape the coming funding periods for the Alpine region.

The example in the heart of Austria gives courage that even in challenging times it is possible to take big steps for nature conservation if protected areas, the public sector, landowners and committed individuals walk together. The wild heart of Austria beats powerfully and steadily.

If you would like to experience the wild heart of Austria, the lynx trail is particularly suitable for this, which winds through the region on exciting trails in 11 stages. https://luchstrail.at/

Find more information about the Netzwerk Naturwald at www.netzwerk-naturwald.at and visit the wilderness area also at www.wildnisgebiet.at !

Photo credit: Christoph Nitsch, Netzwerk Naturwald

To investigate these aspects, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, based in Venice, has developed a project aimed at offering a platform of knowledge and exchange that gives voice to the experiences of the different sites, primarily involving the coordinators of the sites themselves and local stakeholders, but also open to anyone interested in the topics.

After a first phase of investigation, which involved mainly site managers and the main stakeholders, a webinar series will be held with thematic focus (in Italian).

The online meetings, organized in a weekly appointment every Thursday for 3 weeks in April from 4pm to 6pm, will be held on the GoToWebinar platform, open to all participants subscribed to the links below:

·        Talking about rurality: 8 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4776879258228444686

·        Talking about school and education: 15 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/757513347823552014 

·        Talking about tourism: 22 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6870993711327879438

The objective is to voice experiences, share and implement the creative solutions of resilience identified in response to the current pandemic. This activity will also contribute to strengthening the collaboration among the UNESCO sites and with their stakeholders, inspiring the identification of solutions contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, strengthening the potential of UNESCO sites as sustainability laboratories and facilitating the dissemination of good practices developed in them.

Language of the event: Italian

For more information, please contact: Regional.bureau-sc@unesco.org

The first HEALPS2 image film in English has been published. This video provides a glimpse of the project work and explains the main idea. Have a look below! The clip will soon be translated in French, German, Italian and Slovenian. It is the first of a series of videos which will be produced until project end.

The overall objective of HEALPS2 is to develop and improve framework conditions and tools for a better utilisation of Alpine-specific natural health resources for the development of innovative tourism products and service chains. It connects academia, different business sectors such as the health sector, tourism and local service providers, as well as innovation and transfer agencies to jointly implement new business models that improve value creation across sectors in Alpine destinations. This transnational and transversal approach is built on unique Alpine natural health resources and strengthens the Alpine territorial innovation capacity.

After being forced to cancel the 2021 event due to the pandemic situation, ALPARC is pleased to officially announce that the 26th edition of the annual Danilo Re Memorial event will take place from January 27th to January 30th within the Binntal Nature Park in Switzerland.

The event traditionally gathers the Alpine rangers, staff and managers of protected areas that are daily engaged in the conservation and protection of the alpine biodiversity. Once again, participants from all around the Alpine countries will compete in four categories: mountaineering ski, giant slalom, shooting and cross-country.

As usual, the event will also host, the ALPARC General Assembly. It should be held on January 28th 2021. All the ALPARC members are invited to participate.

More information to come

To investigate these aspects, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, based in Venice, has developed a project aimed at offering a platform of knowledge and exchange that gives voice to the experiences of the different sites, primarily involving the coordinators of the sites themselves and local stakeholders, but also open to anyone interested in the topics.

After a first phase of investigation, which involved mainly site managers and the main stakeholders, a webinar series will be held with thematic focus (in Italian).

The online meetings, organized in a weekly appointment every Thursday for 3 weeks in April from 4pm to 6pm, will be held on the GoToWebinar platform, open to all participants subscribed to the links below:

·        Talking about rurality: 8 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4776879258228444686

·        Talking about school and education: 15 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/757513347823552014 

·        Talking about tourism: 22 April 2021 https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6870993711327879438

The objective is to voice experiences, share and implement the creative solutions of resilience identified in response to the current pandemic. This activity will also contribute to strengthening the collaboration among the UNESCO sites and with their stakeholders, inspiring the identification of solutions contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, strengthening the potential of UNESCO sites as sustainability laboratories and facilitating the dissemination of good practices developed in them.

Language of the event: Italian

For more information, please contact: Regional.bureau-sc@unesco.org

Youth at the Top event is back for a seventh edition and registration is now open! The 2020 edition will take place on July 8 th 2021 (and the night of July 8th to 9th). On this common date, protected areas all around the Alps and the Carpathians are invited to take groups of curious kids and teens to the mountains, to experimente their surroundings in a new and creative way. Organizations, protected areas, youth associations, local professionals, and refuges are invited to take part in this international event and to plan educational activities on this year's common theme: "Local Food".

Organizations willing to join the project should fill up the online form before April 15th.

What is Youth at the Top?
Youth at the Top is an international event that aims to help young people (re)discover nature and connect to their mountain heritage. It is organized through local events that take place simultaneously in different countries across the Alps and Carpathians. It has a highly symbolic dimension as hundreds of young people go out and experience nature on a single date through an overnight stay in the mountains. Each registered organization is invited to plan a hike, an overnight stay in the mountains, an activity on a common topic and other educational activities to help the younger generation reconnect with the mountain environment. The project leaves a lot of leeway to the participating organizations to organize local events according to their goals and capabilities.

ALPARC has been responsible for the general management and international communication of the project since its very beginning.The 7th edition of Youth at the Top is coordinated by ALPARC with the financial support from the German Ministry for the Environment.

Photo credits: Naturpark Pfyn-Finges

The winners of the 14th international contest “Fotografare il Parco” have recently been announced and once again the shots are stunning!

From more than 3,300 images submitted, the jury’s choice awarded the first, second and third prizes to a number of exceptional shots: the tenderness of two young stoats playing with a flower (Overall winner - Valter Pallaoro), the New Wave of macro photography that transforms a young woman into a work of geometric abstraction (Second place - Giuseppe Bonali) and finally the landscape wilderness in the shot of Valle del Gallo in Stelvio National Park (Third place - Luca Ronchi). All the winning photographs can be viewed here. For more information about these results, the official press release is available below.

The contest was organized by Stelvio, Gran Paradiso, Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise and de la Vanoise National Park, with the patronage of Alparc, Federparchi and the participation of the media partner “La Rivista della Natura”.

On 13 January 2021 the French Ministry of the Environment organized the virtual “Mountain Biodiversity Day”. It served as a platform for discussions between experts and political representatives from mountain regions all over the world, working in the field of mountain biodiversity. The Mountain Biodiversity Day highlighted and promoted joint messages targeting the importance of mountains within the global Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.


This pandemic is primarily not about bat soup, pangolins or specific viruses but all about our interactions, exploitation and destruction of nature. It is about the interfaces – these edges of destruction– between humans, wildlife and nature in general.  Along with climate change, biodiversity loss and raging inequities and injustice, COVID-19 is just another symptom of an ailing planet and has starkly reminded us of the basic fact: Human, animal, plant, and environmental health and well-being are all intrinsically connected.

It is painfully apparent that addressing the complex interactions of human, animal, and environmental health requires environmentally inclusive, just and shared values that heed landscape- and society-level issues. The quality of current and future human and animal health and well-being will depend on our respectful, humble and responsible environmental stewardship.

One of the most important and proven solutions to this global crisis are protected areas. This is a practice that has been used by Indigenous Peoples and local communities for centuries, setting aside areas that have important natural, cultural, and spiritual values. In recent decades governments have created more and larger protected areas on land and sea, and there is strong evidence that effectively designed and managed protected areas are key to the conservation of biodiversity, climate mitigation and sustaining local livelihoods. However, many protected areas are not well managed; they do not represent the necessary diversity of ecosystems. And many of them are simply too small to be viable in the long term, especially in view of climate change. In a few words, protected areas must be located in the right places, be large enough and interconnected to be functional and sustain viable populations of key species and functions.

It is not sufficient to protect the highest elevations while neglecting the rampant land-use change across the valley floors. If we want our protected areas in the Alps to remain strongholds of biodiversity and long-term refugia for species, we necessarily need to protect the entire altitudinal gradients. Protection also provides numerous ecosystem services, including regulating climate and air quality, and amongst others providing water, energy food while also providing sociocultural benefits to the large urban centers adjacent to the Alpine space and beyond.  Across the Alps we need to make sure that our protected areas are not only connected – ecologically and functionally but also valued appropriately across sectors and by the highly urbanized belt surrounding the Alps.

ALPARC is working together with the protected areas and its Partners (Alpine Convention, Research institutions, NGO’s and Ministries) since some 20 years on these issues of of protected areas location and especially their interconnectivity as all protected areas of the Alps are too small in size to sustainably protect biodiversity for generations to come.
A lot of work and planning has been done for the Alpine Space, methodologies and maps have been produced to better connect protected areas and as well natural spaces to make habitat protection a more efficient element of a global sustainable and environment friendly development of the alpine area. Political awareness has risen about the topic and both – the Alpine Convention and the EUSALP approach have recognized the importance of ecological connectivity linked to long term spatial planning as one of the most promising ways to protect Alpine’s biodiversity.

Stating in January 2021 that emerging zoonotic pathogens, climate change and biodiversity loss have significant implications for both public health and economic stability is perhaps the most tremendous understatement of this still-young century. Returning to zoonotic-origin spillovers: The costs of many individual recent major outbreaks such as SARS, MERS, and Ebola are estimated in the tens of billions of Euros. However, when all is tallied, the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 will certainly be orders of magnitude greater: in the tens of trillions of Euros. The ongoing and future costs of climate change and biodiversity loss appear simply unimaginable.

Investment in nature and climate protection through a better, more resilient and more species orientated approach of habitat conservation seems more than ever before crucial for mankind. The Alpine protected areas and ALPARC constitute the largest network of nature-based solutions for climate change and biodiversity protection within the perimeter of the Alpine Convention.
We need to stop, discounting nature right now. And irrevocably accept that nature is not and can never be considered a cheap externality to our unrestrained production and consumption patterns. Moving forwards, these externalities with which we have burdened our environment must be fully accounted for. Nature can no longer be considered cheap.
As the pandemic continues to rage across the planet, we must urgently recognize and value the foundational importance of intact and resilient environments for our health and wellbeing. Basically, we need biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and health in and across all policies and administrations. Existing siloed approaches are unacceptable and must become a thing of the past.   

Prof. Dr. Chris Walzer
Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology; University of Veterinary Medecine Vienna / Executive Director of Health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York / USA

Dr. Guido Plassmann
Director ALPARC

Workshop results 

The Covid-19 pandemic led to several changes in the protected areas’ visitor flows from what we had expected at the beginning of the year. A significant reduction in outdoor activities during the lockdown period was followed by a rising demand for nature-based tourism in the summer season. The alpine protected areas had to adapt to these changes, particularly by increasing awareness raising actions on correct behavior in the mountains.
These elements were discussed during the workshop "Tourism in the Protected Areas of the Alps - Opportunities and Challenges in a Changing Context" held online on December 14th, 2020. The workshop brought together nearly 50 participants, including the responsible for the tourism activities in the protected areas as well as several experts. The event was an opportunity to discuss not only experiences but also specific needs for the future of sustainable tourism in protected areas.
The results of a survey on the impact of the pandemic on tourist flows in protected areas, conducted by ALPARC between the summer and autumn were presented and accompanied by the experiences from Berchtesgaden National Park and the Gran Paradiso National Park.

Moreover, some of the organizations that signed the charter of the awareness campaign "Be Part of the Mountain" shared their experiences. The Ossola Park (Italy) presented in detail the project developed in this framework, including the use of the logo and training for guides and mountain guides. The Vanoise National Park (France) presented the progress in the involvement of ambassadors, while the Regional Natural Park of the Massif des Bauges (France) showed, among other elements, some videos of awareness on the impact of nature sports on wildlife made during the year 2020. The Nature Park of Nagelfluhkette (Germany) then highlighted the key role of monitor guards in managing correct information on the subject, especially via social networks.
At present 12 organizations signed the “Be Part of the Mountain” charter. In 2020, two new French organizations have expressed their interest to promote the campaign by joining the initiative as members. These are: the National Union of Mountain Guides SNGM (charter signed on 22.04.2020) and the Hautes Alpes departmental section of the French Federation of Alpine Clubs FFCAM (charter signed on 08.10.2020).

The Elections of the ALPARC Council took place at the General Assembly on 22 January. The following persons were newly elected to the council of Directors: Olivier Putot (Natural Park Vercors), Astrid Wiedenhofer (South Tyrolian Nature Parks), Massimo Bocca (Mont Avic Nature Park), Ruedi Haller (Swiss National Park), Dominique Weissen (Swiss Pärke Network) and Cathrine Frick (Office for the Environment, Principality of Liechtenstein).

Our colleagues Anne-Marie Forgeoux (Region Sud, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), Geneviève Borodine (Region Auvergne-Rhône Alpes), Lionel Tardy (Nature Park Baronnies Provencales), Margareth Pallhuber (South Tyrolian Nature Parks), Christian Stauffer (Network of Swiss Parks) and Helmut Kindle (Office for the Environment, Principality of Liechtenstein) have resigned from the panel. We would like to thank them all for their engagement for ALPARC over the last years.

The previous ALPARC Board members (President Peter Oggier, Nature-Park Pfyn-Finges; Vice-Presidents Christian Schwoehrer, ASTERS and Andrea Bertrame, Prealpe Giulie; Secretary General Roland Baier, National Park Berchtesgaden and Treasurer Peter Rupitsch, National Park Hohe Tauern, Carinthia) have been confirmed by the newly elected ALPARC Council for a further 4-years mandate.

This provides continuity for the coming years, which should be a major advantage in these times.

As President, I look forward to further exciting projects and, above all, the Alpine-wide exchange between colleagues!

Dr. Peter Oggier
President
ALPARC

The Interreg Alpine Space “OpenSpaceAlps” project and the Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association (ARL) have joined forces in order to build a new network, based on the idea that especially approaches to open space planning should be developed and implemented across borders. The “AlpPlan” alpine spatial planning network aims to provide spatial and sectoral planning professionals, experts and decision-makers from all Alpine Space countries and regions with a platform for the transnational knowledge exchange of good practices and future solutions for sustainable land-use and spatial planning. The AlpPlan network will work in close cooperation with stakeholders among the existing transnational alpine cooperation framework, such as EUSALP and the Alpine Convention.

The planned activities of the AlpPlan network include:
- annual conferences, which deal with current topics of alpine spatial development
- workshops targeted at specific topics (e.g. international capacity building seminar for young professionals, scholars and advanced students on alpine open spaces)
- elaboration, negotiation and signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) in alpine spatial planning

Further information on:
https://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/openspacealps/en/pilot-cases-and-participatory-activities/alpplan-network/about_alpplan

Sustainable development of alpine open spaces by enhancing spatial planning governance.

The Project aim is to foster sustainable development of Alpine Space by maintaining open spaces as part of alpine Green Infrastructure through an interlinked, multi-level transnational spatial governance considering integration of ecosystems functions and needs into policies.

ALPARC is a project partner and is responsible for the coordination of the Alpswide strategy and governance planning. After the elaboration of a summary of results and relevant data from former EU projects with a focus on Open Spaces, a work over the Alpswide cartographic representation of Open Spaces has started. 

The test phase for the mapping has been focused on the exchange through two workshops over the procedure to follow at the data processing, the research of data sources to identify some infrastructure categories and their classification and differential treatment according to their level of spatial disturbance, this data is being compared and analysed with some of the results from former projects such as ALPBIONET2030 and the JECAMI tool. This process aims to represent the zoning of open spaces in the Alps and to identify the potential open spaces to be conserved