Restoration of damaged ecosystems in Austria’s nature parks

Man has always played a special role as a creative factor in nature parks. The

existing diversity of species and habitats is largely the result of human utilisation.

who have shaped the natural and cultural landscapes, usually over centuries, through traditional management. Today, the nature parks and their stakeholders form a large, intergenerational nature conservation network with currently 48 nature parks, a total area of over 600,000 hectares, around 766,000 citizens in 223 nature park communities and around 200 people involved in nature park management.

With the project “Restoring damaged ecosystems in Austria’s nature parks”, five nature parks in four federal states are utilising and pooling the power of their network together with the Austrian Association of Nature Parks.

The planned restoration measures are aimed at prioritised, impaired ecosystems and their improvement or restoration and affect six wetlands and 35 special sites with a total area of 47.8 ha.

The participating nature parks are:

– Rosalia-Kogelberg in Burgenland (5 areas, 8.2 ha)

– Kamptal-Schönberg in Lower Austria (5 areas, 4 ha)

– Styrian Eisenwurzen (1 area, 2.5 ha) and Southern Styria (3 areas, 15 ha) in Styria

– Kaunergrat (Pitztal-Fließ-Kaunertal) in Tyrol (27 areas, 18 ha)

As part of this project, the Styrian Eisenwurzen Nature and Geopark intends to implement measures to renaturalise the wetland in Mooslandl. For this purpose, an area of 2.5 ha was selected as a project area for which measures were defined. The primary goal is to significantly improve the ecological condition of the area and restore its wet meadow character.