On the 23rd and 24th of March 2022, the Centralparks project held its Final Conference. The Conference was organised in hybrid format: participants could join on-line via Zoom, as well as attend in-person in Wieliczka, Poland. We are more than happy to say, that the conference was a great success. Almost 40 speakers, and over 65 event participants in Wieliczka plus above 60 joining us online gave their time and resources to attend and to contribute.

A vision for the Carpathians

The conference was opened by Isidoro De Bortoli, the project´s coordinator from Eurac Research, together with Monika Ochwat-Marcinkiewitz, from the local organiser Ekopsychology Society, who welcomed the participants. Further introductory remarks for all participants were delivered by Roman Cherepanyn (Senior conservation expert, WWF Ukraine), Lukasz Rejt (Director of the Department of Nature Conservation of the Ministry for Climate and Environment of Poland) and Lubor Jusko (Joint Secretariat of the Interreg Central Europe Programme).

Following thematic speeches were held by Harald Egerer, (Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention), Przemysław Oginski (European Commission, DG Environment), Boris Erg (IUCN Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia), Andreas Beckmann (WWF Central and Eastern Europe) as well as Guido Plassmann (Alparc).

Following some very powerful speeches, the Centralparks consortium has presented the project outputs after three years of intense work:

• Integration of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Carpathian region presented by Zbigniew Niewiadomski (Ekopsychology Society, Poland), Ewelina Zajac (Pieniny National Park, Poland), Bernadetta Zawilinska (Cracow University of Economics, Poland), Borbála Szabó-Major (Danube-Ipoly National Park Directorate, Hungary), Zuzana Okániková (Pronatur, Slovakia), Marie Petru (VIS Bílé Karpaty, Czechia), and Roman Maňák (VIS Bílé Karpaty, Czechia).
• Building capacities of Carpathian PAs managers presented by Borbála Szabó-Major (Danube-Ipoly National Park Directorate, Hungary), Tibor Standovár (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary), Soma Horváth (Danube-Ipoly National Park Directorate, Hungary) and Ferenc Szmorad (WPT2 stakeholder).
• Carpathian Ecosystem Services Toolkit presented by Ján Kadlečík (State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic), Ján Černecký (State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic), Radoslav Považan (Pronatur, Slovakia) and Juraj Švajda (Matej Bel University, Slovakia).
• Ingredients of good communication presented by Hanna Öllös (European Wilderness Society).

The final closing remarks of the day were provided by Harald Egerer and Przemysław Oginski.

Good practices in the Carpathians and beyond

On the second day, we also had the opportunity to get an overview of the projects SaveGREEN (Hildegard Meyer, WWF Central and Eastern Europe), DinAlpCONNECT (Filippo Favilli, Eurac Research), ConnectGREEN (Gabriella Nagy, CEEweb) and BEECH POWER (Marcus Waldherr, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development), presenting their good practice experiences focusing on sustainable development, related to the Carpathian region and beyond.

This workshop was followed by a moderated panel discussion, focusing on the opportunities of transnational cooperation and networking for an effective Protected Areas´ management beyond borders, and to inspire closer cooperation and exchange between protected area networks. The session explored the topics of Governance, Communication, Cooperation, Strengths and Weaknesses as well as Partnership within five protected area networks:

• Carpathian Network of Protected Areas (represented by Mircea Verghelet, Director of Piatra Craiului National Park and Chair of the Carpathian Network of Protected Areas Steering Committee)
• Alpark (represented by Guido Plasmann, Director of Alparc, Alpine Network of Protected Areas)
• DANUBEPARKS (represented by Georg Frank, Secretary General of DANUBEPARKS, Danube Network of Protected Areas)
• Parks Dinarides (represented by Vladana Vojinović (Programme manager in Parks Dinarides)
• Carpathian Wetland Initiative (represented by Ján Kadlečík, Coordinator of the Carpathian Wetland Initiative)

In the afternoon of the 24th of March, participants had the chance to visit the extraordinary UNESCO Wieliczka salt mine, its countless chambers and centuries of history. In parallel, the Steering Committee meeting of the Carpathian Network of Protected Areas was held, on which the main conclusions of the Centralparks project, and the conference contents in connection to the future of the Carpathian Network of Protected Areas were drawn up.

Thank you for your involvement!

Dear speakers, participants, organisers and all supporting in the background, thank you for having made this event a great success, which allowed us to look back on an exciting, eventful and successful three years of European cooperation in our Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Centralparks project.

During that time, three thematic work packages were implemented across Central Europe. Through the pilot actions and activities, a wide range of innovative tools and solutions were developed, implemented, communicated and disseminated at a local, regional and cross-border level.

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to each of you who participated in Centralparks Final Conference, as well as throughout the whole project implementation. You made Centralparks a success and it was a great pleasure to see so many of you accompanying our concluding steps!

The Centralparks team offers to take you on a quick journey, to discover five ways how Centralparks contributes to harmonising biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Carpathians. Watch our educational scribble videos below!

Protected areas and their wider landscapes

Local sustainable tourism in the Carpathians

Communicating Protected Areas

Carpathian Ecosystem Services

Building capacities of Protected Area managers

We are glad to share that the Pilot action completion report of the “Carpathian strategy for enhancing biodiversity and landscape conservation outside and inside protected areas” in areas adjacent to the Pieniny National Park (Poland) is newly available in Polish language on the national park´s website.

Pilot action completion report surrounding Pieniny National Park

The report summarises the implementation of the pilot action carried out under Centralparks. and presents, among others, recommendations resulting from the test implementation of the “Carpathian strategy for strengthening biodiversity conservation and landscape outside and inside protected areas” in areas adjacent to the Polish Pieniny National Park. The strategy and its implementation is part of the thematic 1st thematic work package “Integration of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Carpathian region”.

The surroundings of the Pieniny National Park were selected due to the constantly increasing investment pressure on the areas located within the Park boundaries and its buffer zone. The Pieniny National Park administration hopes that the presented report will draw the attention of a broader audience on the importance of preventing further adverse effects of increasing development pressures on the national park, its external buffer zone, and surrounding areas within the four municipalities involved. Moreover, it’s publication is also intended to help mitigate threats to the ecological connectivity and landscape values of the Polish-Slovak transboundary Pieniny region.

The pilot action was coordinated by the Centralparks partner Ekopsychology Society, in cooperation with the management of the Pieniny National Park and with the support and involvement of the local governments of the four municipalities where the buffer zone of the national park was designated, i.e. the municipalities of Czorsztyn, Krościenko nad Dunajcem, Łapsze Niżne and Szczawnica.

This report will soon be available in English under ‘Our achieviements’.

Check out our newest Carpathian posters! These posters highlight the natural and cultural values of Carpathian protected areas and are sure to make any classroom, library or other wall pop for the upcoming school months! The posters you see below are available in EN, CZ, PL, RO, HU and UA languages.

You can access them together with many other project material under the section ‘Our achievements‘.

For the printable versions, please contact info@wilderness-society.org

On 9th December 2021 the representatives of local municipality authorities and Magura National Park administration, other relevant local stakeholders, and Centralparks experts on sustainable tourism met again at the national park education and visitor centre in Krempna (Poland).

The objective of this additional meeting (not originally planned, but possible due to budget savings made during the previous project implementation phases) was to consult the first draft of the “Strategy for the sustainable development of tourism based on the natural and cultural wealth of Magura National Park and its surroundings” with the members of the local partnership formed under the Centralparks project, involving seven municipalities sharing the national park external buffer zone.

The first draft of this community strategy already accommodates feedback and inputs gathered during the series of 4 thematic workshops, carried out in the Magura region in October 2021. This local strategy shall duly include selected activities recommended under all three dimensions (environmental, economic, and social) and corresponding three strategic objectives (further divided into nine operational objectives) of the draft “Strategy for local sustainable tourism development based on natural and cultural heritage of the Carpathians”, elaborated in 2019-2020 under the Centralparks project (in support for the implementation of the 2011 Protocol on Sustainable Tourism), submitted on 10th June 2021 for its official endorsement to the Parties of the Carpathian Convention. 
The local strategy for the Magura region shall be finalized by the end of January 2022, which will allow its integration with the new local development strategies for the period 2022-2030, to be elaborated and adopted next year by the 7 municipalities surrounding the national park.

Consultations in Krempna were jointly organized by the Ekopsychology Society* and the administration of Magura National Park, in the frame of the pilot action aimed at testing the above Centralparks draft strategy at the local and regional level, according to one of the priorities of the current Polish Presidency of the Carpathian Convention.

* Centralparks project partner, leader of the thematic work package No 1 “Integration of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Carpathian Region”.

From 18^th to 19^th of November 2021, the Carpathian Convention Implementation Committee and the Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention organized the 12^th Carpathian Convention Implementation Committee meeting in Krakow, Poland.

The first day sessions focused on the Carpathian Convention ongoing and planned activities, included reports by the Carpathian Network of Protected Areas (CNPA) Steering Committee Chair and a presentation of the Centralparks project main results and progress in the CNPA revitalization process. In order to seek synergies and potential for further networks, Centralparks project’s outputs, developed solutions and best practices were presented, together with other similar local initiatives and projects, during the joint session of the Carpathian Convention and the Centrum GRID/Warsaw.

The second day sessions focused on the updates on the Carpathian Strategy development process and on the strengthen of networks within the Carpathian Convention discussed during a workshop supported by the project “Strengthening the ESD network in the Carpathian Convention via science-policy-practice interface”.

The event hosted a CNPA Steering Committee meeting, with the aim to discuss and agree on the recommendations elaborated during the 3^rd CNPA Conference in Visegrad, September 2021. It also offered a platform to present best practices of protected areas management and facilitate a dialogue on further enhancement of cooperation between and within the protected areas in the Carpathians and other regions. Conference attendees heard about the valuable outputs of Centralparks, received inputs from the Steering Committee Members of the CNPA and discuss about CNPA next steps planned by the Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention. One of them is the preparation of the next CNPA event, that will be held in the framework of the Centralparks project final conference, in Wieliczka (PL) on the 23^rd and 24^th of March 2022. 

Customer care, satisfaction and needs monitoring are common activities that we encounter in commercial practice. Even in the case of monitoring the customer’s needs in the field of nature tourism, it is about the quality of the experience. However, in this case the end result is not a high-turnover consumer product, but an “entity” that sensitively responds to the way and amount of use. The difference compared to commercial marketing frameworks is that in the case of nature, we must take into account certain limits, the so-called carrying capacity of the territory. Knowing and respecting the carrying capacity is an essential part of the nature tourism management process so that we can preserve natural values. Natural resources are often not renewable and their damage or destruction can have an impact on the functioning of the ecosystems present and thus on us humans.

For the sustainable development of nature tourism it is therefore necessary to monitor the number of visitors, but at the same time it is very important to know the views and needs of visitors (qualitative survey) so that the offer in nature tourism can meet the expectations and needs of both sides.

In the framework of the Centralparks project, the Administration of the Protected Landscape Area Cerová vrchovina, in cooperation with the NGO PRONATUR, carried out a qualitative survey of the opinions of visitors to the PLA Cerová vrchovina in the summer months. The questionnaire consisted of 16 questions, which took about eight minutes to answer. 162 visitors took part in the survey, of which 36 questionnaires were conducted in Hungarian with visitors from Hungary. The majority of the survey was carried out in the locality of the Šomoška nature trail, a smaller part in Gemerské Dechtáry and Fiľakovo, in the Gemer region of Slovakia. The results of the survey provided us with valuable information about the perception of the protected area, about the satisfaction of visitors with the existing infrastructure, information and services such as accommodation and meals in the region, and also about what should be improved in the area.

The individual conclusions of the survey are available directly on the website of the Protected Landscape Area Administration Cerová vrchovina.