National Parks in Hungary in peril

Massive setback for nature conservation, as the Hungarian government accepted a bill on April, 28th 2015, which virtually abolishes the 10 National Parks in Hungary. More detailed, the management rights of over 300,000 hectare of protected areas will be taken away from the National Parks’ management responsibility and passed on to the National Land Management Fund Organization (NFA). One of the affected areas is the Duna-Drava National Park, which is central part of the Croatian-Hungarian TBR MDD.
Given this development, the National Park system in Hungary, which has been established over the last 40 years and successfully managed Hungarian natural and cultural heritage is now seriously jeopardised. Biodiversity conservation is now at risk to take a backseat, while commercial will potentially be made a priority.

WWF, together with a number of other environmental organisations are calling for immediate action to reverse this EU wide unprecedented decision and to ensure Hungary’s important role in European nature conservation.

For more information please klick here.

For our German-speaking audience we can also recommend reading the article on Pester Lloyd.

Slovenia asked for EU funding for Mura dam

The decision to build a hydropower dam at Hrastje Mota on the Mura River in the Slovenian part of the planned TBR MDD is further pushed ahead. Though the Environmental Impact Assessment on this project is still ongoing and results not know yet the Slovenia government asked already for EU funding for this project.

According to Radiotelevizija Slovenija, the planned Mura dam at Hrastje Mota was included by the Slovenian government into the draft National Reform Programme, which was sent to Brussels last week to be considered for funding under the Juncker’s investment plan.

As we reported in February, funding for planned dams on the Drava River in Croatia, which are threatening important protected areas including several Natura 2000 sites, the Regional Park “Drava-Mura” as well as the Croatian-Hungarian TBR MDD, was already rejected by Juncker’s commission. “We expect that the EU Commission will again not grant funding for this nature destructive dam project on the ecological important Mura River” says Arno Mohl, conservation expert at WWF.