Join private, NGO, and community land conservationists from around the world at the International Land Conservation Network’s (ILCN) 2020 Global Congress, held in partnership with the First Congress of the European Land Conservation Network (ELCN)!
The 2020 Congress of the ILCN and the ELCN will build upon the momentum, conversations, collaborations, and relationships that have emerged within these two networks over the past several years. The Congress will explore a range of topics, focused on how attendees may take specific actions in their home countries to advance private land conservation. The Congress is free to participants.
Please complete the proposal form electronically at the following link: https://bit.ly/2WcZCnH
The third International Workshop of the ELCN will deal with the topic of “Cooperation for Private Land Conservation”. The workshop, which will take place on 3-7 June 2019 in Sighisoara, Romania, will explore examples of successful cooperative models for private land conservation. It will tackle the question of how conservationists, landowners, land users, public authorities and other stakeholders can best work together to foster private land conservation.
For more information please visit the event page.
In the framework of the ELCN, WWF Oasi convened the first ever national meeting of Italian privately protected areas in Orbetello from 3 to 5 April.
The ELCN is carrying out a study on the use of easements as a conservation tool in the European Union. Please help us better understand the current use and growth potential of this conservation tool by filling out this 3-minute online questionnaire.
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As foreseen in Pilot Action A.06, Portuguese ELCN Project partner Montis seeks to bring land management where it lacks to create more biodiversity, more richness and more social value, with the community’s involvement. For this purpose, they intend to buy marginal land that in the recent past was important to the rural economy, but nowadays has no social function and is very vulnerable, namely to large wildfires, due to decades of abandonment. The goal is to give a hand to the natural processes to increase biodiversity and the landscape resilience in order to become more useful and pleasant to a larger variety of species. They are doing so through a crowdfunding campaign that can be found here in case anyone would like to make a donation - which naturally would be highly appreciated!
On 5 February, MEP Karl-Heinz FLORENZ, President of the Biodiversity, Hunting and Countryside Intergroup of the European Parliament, has hosted an event in the European Parliament: Private landowners, what role for Europe’s nature? The event was an excellent opportunity to present the work of two ongoing LIFE Preparatory projects working on fostering and better institutionalisation of Private Land Conservation in Europe: Land Is Forever (LIFE LIFE) and European Private Land Conservation Network (LIFE ELCN).
The research targeted practitioners and included a series of focus group discussions and an online questionnaire. While the research was done in South Africa, the lessons learnt are applicable world wide.
ELCN project partner Montis has recently developed 3 volunteering actions with companies that allowed to deploy conservation efforts on two areas managed the NGO: Carvalhal de Vermilhas and baldio de Carvalhais, located in the center of Portugal. The actions took place on the 10th, 13th and 14th of October and accounted a total number of 92 volunteers.
To many, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of incentives are financial tools. However at the ELCN's workshop on the subject in Madrid, Spain, from 5-7 November, it turned out the motivations were manifold, ranging from conservation ideals to sentiment and tradition. Interestingly, studies have shown that financial motivations often rank at the bottom of the list of reasons why landowners get engaged in private land conservation. During the workshop this was confirmed with both the results of a global level scientific research and a practical example from Burren in Ireland.
We are proud to announce that our Pilot Action: Historic Heritage and Nature Conservation has been accepted as one of the events celebrating the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 in Italy. You can read more about it (in Italian) here.
Call for Comments and Examples is now open. An initial draft has been prepared, but your input, insights and illustrations are requested.
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Study tour & ILCN Global Congress, Santiago, Chile, January 24-26th, 2018
The ELCN project team attended the International Land Conservation Network, ILCN’s2018 Global Congress in Santiago, Chile on January 24-26th, 2018 and a study tour, an opportunity to see the conservation tools and techniques in use in Chile first hand, and to discuss the potential of their transferability to other countries in Europe. The Congress explored a range of topics, focused on how attendees may take specific actions in their home countries to advance private land conservation, as well as the challenges and opportunities ahead for private land conservation. During the Congress ADEPT gave a presentation in the session of the conference called "Working lands conservation: sustaining our farms, forests and ranches”.
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The purpose of the Colorado Study Tour was to introduce the ELCN delegates to conservation tools and techniques that are not yet widely applied in the EU and to discuss the potential of their transferability with private land conservation practitioners from the US. The ELCN members together with representatives from the ILCN and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy went on an educational study tour of private land conservation projects around Denver, Colorado. Afterwards, the ELCN members attended the Land Trust Alliance’s annual Rally in Denver from Thursday night, October 26 through Saturday, October 28, 2017.
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The project steering committee met on 19 - 20 June 2017 at the headquarters of NABU in Berlin, Germany in order to sign partnership agreements and discuss the procedural and technical details of the project implementation (communication, reporting format, schedules). The meeting also served to further structure the work packages and formally assign clear roles and responsibilities within the project.
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