MoPA: "Monitoring for protected areas with special focus on biodiversity and sustainable development of the areas"

For the ongoing observation and analysis of nature conservation tasks, highly specific monitoring methods are used in protected areas. In Germany, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (Bundesamt für Naturschutz), and in Poland the Generalna Dyrekcja Ochrony Środowiska (GIOŚ), are working to standardise biodiversity monitoring. These regularly implemented monitoring procedures are still largely dominated by natural science approaches, while the social and economic dimensions of protected areas remain largely unconsidered. Existing monitoring systems do not yet sufficiently reflect the role of protected areas as communicators of the value of biodiversity.

The aim of the project is to supplement existing monitoring procedures in protected areas, in particular through the use of socio-economic survey methods.

The planned outcomes of the project are:

1. the organisation of at least 69 cross-border events on specialist topics, with a total of 885 participants from the three partner countries of the project (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Poland);
2. the co-design of a cross-border network in which seven organisations work together;
3. the cross-border development, announcement and implementation of supplementary monitoring procedures for the various categories of large protected areas in the German–Polish border region.

The expected results of the cross-border activities, following completion of the project, are cross-border cooperation between seven project partners (universities of the Euroregion Pomerania) and associated partners (protected areas of the Euroregion Pomerania), with 90 participants, whithin the context of various activities. In addition, the MoPA project should lead to the protected area administrations applying the complementary monitoring methods developed across borders. 

The HNEE work package focuses on a social science approach. It carries out research on selected nature experience offers and underlying relational values and their perception by visitors in large protected areas of the Pomerania Euroregion. These will be compared with the existing strategies of the protected area administrations. The aim is to determine the extent to which visitors perceive and "take away" what the protected area administrations want to convey. In addition, quantitative data on visitor numbers of specific nature experience offers will be included.

As part of the project, the following measures will be implemented:

• Development of a set of supplementary monitoring procedures for protected areas that take into account experiences of nature and relational values
• Development of a new monitoring method addressing intentions, perceptions and learning effects, based on representative nature experience offers in protected areas and supplemented by visitor counts
• Public relations work, as well as information and awareness-raising activities related to the topic
• Creation of a handbook for the practical implementation and utilisation of the results in the protected areas 

Which types of visitor infrastructure are therefore particularly “successful” when it comes to shaping nature experiences and environmental education?

Project activities also include public relations work, the involvement of students, and awareness-raising for the topic. The methods developed in the various work packages of the joint project will be made available to the practice partners as contributions within a handbook, serving as a basis for further application.

Information about the project is also available on the website of the Interreg programme and on the joint website of the project partners.