Every May 24, the European Day of Natural Parks is celebrated with the aim of encouraging public support for these protected areas.
The European Day of Natural Parks is celebrated with the aim of encouraging public support for these protected areas. The first European national parks were declared in Sweden on May 24, 1909. To commemorate this day, the EUROPARC Federation has in its latest program 8 lines of action ranging from the integration of protected areas in the territory to the environmentalization of sectoral policies, including, among others, Line 2 of ecosystem services for human welfare.
Who are ‘Lurgaia Fundazioa‘ for the indigenous forests of Euskadi?
In the Basque Community and in relation to this experience of environmental restoration, we would like to talk about the work of the Lurgaia Foundation, a private non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote the conservation of biodiversity and the management of natural heritage: species, habitats, associated ecological processes and landscape.
Its Undabaso project manages some 200 hectares of land in the Reserve under stewardship, in the process of restoration to future forests. In the Urdabai Biosphere Reserve, instead of native forests, the area is dominated by large pine and, increasingly, eucalyptus plantations. To alleviate this situation in the Undabaso area, a future large forest is located. There, they have been accessing adjacent plots in order to create an area without fragmentation that allows the development of ecological processes associated with native species. For this purpose, seeds were collected from the area and we used native plants with a guarantee of local origin to preserve the genetic richness.
Ner Zuhaitz eguna: learning from the environment
In nergroup, environmental care is an aspect that we have integrated into the celebration of the ‘ner Zuhaitz Eguna‘ (ner Tree Day). In this event, volunteers related to nergroup’s projects have collaborated with Lurgaia for the reforestation of this great forest. The Zuhaitz Eguna has also been an annual date in our calendar, where we have reinforced our purpose by learning to strengthen our environmental education with the planting of species in a natural way with different species of trees (oak, beech, ash, alder, birch, holly, etc.).