The Danube River is a green lifeline for biodiversity. While
the Network of Danube Protected Areas preserves the most valuable sites,
habitat fragmentation limits efforts to preserve a cohesive ecosystem. Also, facing
the long-term effects of climate change, rivers are becoming more and more
relevant for ecological connectivity.
To tackle this issue, the Danube River Network of Protected
Areas launched the Danube Volunteers Day in 2017 during the project
DANUBEparksCONNECTED, funded by the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme.
Helping hands for the
corridor management
Youth and school groups, local NGO's, municipalities,
representatives of corporate sector and various other stakeholders from nearly
all Danube countries were mobilized as helping hands for corridor management. Events
were organized in 8 different countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary,
Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.
Annual themes
Every year DANUBEPARKS is announcing the new theme for
Danube Volunteers Day.
- 1st year: Dry Habitat Corridor
- 2nd year: WILDislands
- 3rd year: Softwood forest
Results
In 3 years of successful implementation of action we can
proudly say that we mobilized more than 1200 volunteers to spend over 3.500
working hours in 39 different actions aiming to preserve the most valuable
natural sites.
Some of the successfully implemented activities:
- waste
collection,
- removal
of invasive plant species,
-
mowing,
- building
of educational trail,
- tree-planting,
-
citizen science activities.