Europe's wilderness from 2008 to 5%

Paanajärvi NP ©Viktor Gritsuk

Strengthening the protection of Europe’s wilderness from 2008 to 5%Zoltan Kun, Executive DirectorPAN Parks Foundation

Soomaa NP © Mati Kose

What happened between 2008-2012



• Civil Society initiated a Resolution on Wilderness• submitted to EC• signed by over 100 organisations including Birdlife, Europarc, IUCN, PAN Parks, WWF

©iStock/Graeme Purdy

European Parliament special report on wilderness

• adopted on 3 February 2009

• provides a popular mandate as vaste majority approved

• follow-up needed now


Majella NP © Barbara Mayer


EC Presidency Conference in Prague, May 2009

• adopted the Agenda for Europe’s wilderness with 24 recommendations

• Policy

• Awareness building

• Information needs

• Supporting capacity

Majella NP © Bruno D’Amicis


Wilderness Working Group chaired by Europarc

• participants from NGO sector and protected areas

• main focus on developing a wilderness definition

• finalised in April 2012 approved by EC in September

Wilderness definition

A wilderness is an area governed by natural processes. It is composed of native habitats and species, and large enough for the effective ecological functioning of natural processes. It is unmodified or only slightly modified and without intrusive or extractive human activity, settlements, infrastructure or visual disturbance.

Wilderness area

Wild areasToo small to be

wilderness

Other protected areas

All forms of PAs are contributing to biodiversity conservation!

Current stage of natural development (indicated by eg. IUCN category)

Non-intervention (current mgmt practice) intervention

Soomaa NP © Arne Ader


EC Presidency Conference on wilderness restoration in Brussels November 2010

• announcing the inclusion of wilderness in EC 2020 Biodiversity Strategy

• announcing the development of a guidance document for N2000 managers

Borjomi-Kharagauli NP © Kote Gabrichidze

The Economic of Wilderness mini-conference in Brussels (European Parliament) on January 2012

• the EP calls on the Commission and Member States to co-operate with local non-governmental organisations to promote the value of wilderness


Oulanka NP © Paavo Hamunen


EC wilderness guidance document for N2000 sites

• Alterra, Eurosite, PAN Parks

• final draft submitted in March 2012

• final document soon available on EC website

Majella NP © Bruno D’Amicis


Wilderness Register to be set as foundation of European Wilderness Preservation System

• Alterra, University of Leeds, PAN Parks

• unique database available on EEA (by Sept 2013)

• currently in consultation phase with preliminary list


Photo: Simon KertysChamois © Bruno D’Amicis

We are running for WILD10 which is to be organised in Salamanca, Spain in October 2013


PAN Parks contributionsRetezat NP © Andreas Beckmann


Who we are

Photo: Simon Kertys© Bruno D’Amicis

PAN Parks is the only European-wide organisation focusing on the protection of wilderness areas


PAN Parks works to protect Europe’s wilderness, the continent’s most undisturbed areas of nature and contributes to implementing the Agenda for Europe’s Wilderness (outputs of Prague conference)

PAN Parks contributions

Paanajärvi NP © Minna Koramo


Work programme 2013: Linking wilderness to EC policies and priorities in order to ensure proper protection and representation of wilderness within N2000 network


Majella NP ©MNP

Linking to EC priorities

• wilderness is part of the 2020 Biodiversity Strategy

• Green Infrastructure / Cohesion policy

• CAP reform discussion

• Financing biodiversity

• PES / Biz & Biodiversity

Borjomi-Kharagauli NP © Konstantin Gabrichidze

Analysing legal protection under the current nature directives

Fulufjället NP © Vitantonio Dell’Orto/exuviaphoto.com

Promoting N2000 guidance document

Peneda-Geres NP © Marcos Veiga

Collecting best-practice for mgmt

Archipelago NP © Janne Görling

Contributing to wilderness register

‘The Million Project’ provides the framework to organisations working on the protection of wilderness and to more protected areas throughout Europe to join

Protecting 1 million hectares of wilderness by 2015



Borjomi-Kharagauli NP © Kote Gabrichidze

Pro-biodiversity business examples

Wilderness for people – people for wildernessTourism / Finance, investment / Forestry

Fulufjallet NP © Vitantonio Dell’Orto


Developing research agenda for wilderness

• What the benefits of wilderness protection are

• Joint report with Society for Conservation Biology

• Wilderness Resource Bank

Archipelago NP © Janne Görling

Wilderness Funding Programme

FR event in the House of Lords, Londonspecies protection / training / interpretation

AwarenessPromoting wilderness on social mediaFacebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest

Youtube.com


Wilderness is closer than you think!


International Year of Wilderness

Oulanka NP © Kimmo Salminen

WILD10, Salamanca, October 2013

Soomaa NP © Arne Ader

Linkage with Europarc Federation

Charter for sustainable tourism / Transboundary protection / EEIG for wilderness

Retezat NP © Mihai Moiceanu

5% vision – moral argument

23 October: EEA reported 21% protection in Europe! Is 5% too much?

www.panparks.org

THANK YOU!

PAN Parks works to protect

Europe’s wilderness, the

continent’s most undisturbed areas

of nature

http://panparks.orghttp://facebook.com/panparks

http://panparks.org/user/registerhttp://linkedin.com/panparksgrouphttp://youtube.com/user/PANParks

http://storiesofwilderness.panparks.orghttp://mymillionproject.ning.com

[email protected]

Europe's wilderness from 2008 to 5%

Education

pan parks

wilderness

protection

panparks

panparks

salamanca

contributing

agenda